Collegio alla Querce, Auberge Resorts Collection has officially opened its doors. The 16th-century property rests on a hillside in Florence, offering views of the city’s UNESCO-celebrated Centro Storico. Loking over the Piazza del Duomo, Collegio alla Querce was a center of learning for more than 100 years starting in 1868. The property has been transformed into an 83-room hotel with four F&B venues, including a bar in the former principal’s office.
Outdoors, lawns cascade down four levels of terraced gardens leading to the pool and its oak-fringed bar and restaurant. The property has 49 guestrooms, 28 suites and six Grand Suites, including the 2,292-square-foot Residenza la Quercia. The hotel’s accommodations showcase some of the buildings’ original features, including restored hand-painted frescoes and coffered wood ceilings. Contemporary furnishings and personal wine cellars complement antiques and original artworks.
The individually named Grand Suites offer living and dining areas, stone bathrooms with large windows and private terraces. Incorporated into the seven-bedroom Palazzo Moderno, which can be booked on its own for complete privacy, the signature Residenza la Quercia includes two living rooms, two bathrooms, a butler’s kitchen and a rooftop terrace with a private hot tub.
Food and beverage options include La Gamella restaurant, which serves seasonal Italian classics for breakfast, lunch and dinner, while the Cicchetti open kitchen serves as the chef’s table in the center of the signature restaurant. Other options include La Gamella’s, an amaro bar, the atrium-inspired Conservatorio, offering light seasonal fare, handcrafted pastries and wines, and the all-day poolside restaurant and bar, Café Focolare, serving pizzas, pastas, crudos and panini.
Pretty cool: Bar Bertelli, once the headmaster’s office, is where guests can enjoy cigars and cocktails complemented by bar snacks. Portraits of the former principi degli Studi, (the college’s top students) line the bar’s ceilings.
At the Aelia spa, there are four treatment suites, two of which are set within the greenery and have private steam showers and a private pool. Guests can choose from a range of therapeutic treatments inspired by Tuscan traditions and post-treatment olive oil tastings with a custom ingestible olive oil elixir, LXR12, bottled exclusively by Furtuna Skin for Auberge.
There's also La Cappella, the restored chapel; Il Teatro, the original theater with a stage and wraparound balcony; the gardens, ideal for social events; and the Conservatorio’s adjacent library rooms, which host an art salon series.
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