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Torre delle Cannelle
Talamone, Tuscany, Italy
Torre delle Cannelle
Talamone, Tuscany, Italy
Your Own Private Seaside Fortress
A 15th-century Tuscan watchtower created to spot invading Saracens now offers three stories of rustic-chic living space and direct access to a private pebbled beach. Here, earthen tiles spread underfoot, exposed wooden beams stretch overhead, and upper-level perches allow to do your own surveying of the Tuscan archipelago.
Isolated on a craggy seaside bluff within Italy’s Maremma National Park, this fortified tower was built in medieval times to watch out for incoming Saracens from North Africa. Today, the tower’s top floor houses one of three bedrooms with an ensuite bath, perched above the villa’s wrap-around, second-story roof terrace. The watchtower overlooks the jagged limestone cliffs and coved beach below, taking in the entire Tuscan archipelago and glinting Tyrrhenian Sea. A manicured lawn and garden plot extends alongside the tower, and a vine-shaded pergola hides an outdoor dining table and shower. A private garden path provides access to the cliffs below the villa, and a secluded pebble beach curves alongside the surf, just 500 meters away.
Seclusion defines the tower, set within a natural 40,000-hectare park comprised of dense Mediterranean maquis, coastal floodplains, natural reserve beaches and eco-rich oases and forests. The tower’s refurbished ground-floor living room offers an open, wood-burning hearth and casual, strait-laced furnishings in a simple, straightforward style that’s mimicked throughout the home. There’s a seaview balcony on this level, but the real view spreads before your eyes upstairs, where a second living room opens onto the added, wrap-around living terrace with its dramatic vistas extending for miles out to sea.
AROUND
Surrounded by dense forest and Mediterranean shrubbery, this towering villa for rent in Tuscany soars over a pebbled beach some 500 meters below the property. The tower is located inside the Maremma Regional Park, seven and a half kilometers from Talamone. Traditionally a fishing village, Talamone occupies a rugged promontory over the Mediterranean, and features a small, historical harbor, sturdy castle ruins with an uncanny resemblance to the Torre delle Cannelle, and several Roman ruins, including a villa and its cisterns. The town’s Museum of the Lagoon explores the one-of-a-kind marine ecosystem of the Orbetello lagoon within the Maremma, waters where freshwater and saltwater fish cohabitate.
The parklands offer multiple opportunities for exploring the protected area. Long beaches and piney woods cover the Maremma, and the scenic natural park’s marshlands, crystalline waters and forested paths all invite exploration. Wines are made in the area, with vintners and vineyards dating back to ancient Etruscan times. Foods of the region include fish and shellfish, forest mushrooms and chestnuts, cultivated barley and corn for polenta, olive trees for oil pressing, and assorted wild herbs and honey. The larger, fortress town of Grosseto is considered the regional capital, a full-service community lesser known than its big sister neighbors, but no less scenic, offering sightseeing, markets, boutiques, bars, and restaurants.
LOCATION
Talamone, Tuscany, Italy. Nearest airports: Rome, Florence, Pisa
BEST TIME TO VISIT: April to November
