Castiglion del Bosco – a genuine golfing gem in the heart of Tuscany

The course at Castiglion del Bosco is situated within the UNESCO world heritage site of Val d’Orcia in the Brunello di Montalcino winemaking region of Tuscany. Businessman Massimo Ferragamo acquired the 2,000-acre estate in 2003 then set about restoring the architectural and winemaking aspects of a property which includes castle ruins, a medieval church and historic village buildings.

Old farmhouses and various premises were transformed into guest villas and suites and a new cellar was constructed to handle the revitalisation of the wine production. In 2011, Tom Weiskopf was engaged to design an 18-hole golf course close to the accommodation, with old farm buildings converted into a clubhouse.

Golfers now travelling to Italy, where The Ryder Cup will be played next month, are being invited to a new, exclusive Tuscany golf experience at Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco, voted Travel+Leisure’s No. 1 Hotel in the World 2022. The five-star luxury hilltop resort offers 42 sophisticated suites and 11 luxury farmhouse villas, each of which features antique furnishings and local textiles.

Castiglion del Bosco is also one of the world’s most beautiful wine estates, and membership of The Club brings exclusive privileges and access to the winery, including the option of a personal locker in the Members’ Private Wine Cellar. The organic-certified vineyards occupy 62 hectares, planted solely with the Sangiovese red wine grape variety responsible for the estate’s prestigious Brunello di Montalcino wines.

In 2022, the Ferragamo family sold the estate to “an important international family office” with Rosewood retained to manage the luxury hotel. A year later, it was announced that Phil Smith (who worked on the original design with Tom Weiskopf) would oversee a major renovation project to install new drainage, reconstruct bunkers, upgrade irrigation, replace cart paths and build a new practice facility.

The resort’s Tuscany Golf Experience special promotion includes a stay at Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco for two guests in a Suite; daily breakfast for two persons; two 18-hole rounds per stay (advanced reserved tee times 8-10am only, subject to availability); golf cart; rental equipment; practice range; dinner at Restaurant Campo del Drago (Michelin Star) or Osteria La Canonica.

Click on this Castiglion del Bosco link to read our review of the golf course.

As is often the case when we travel to a particular destination, we also like to have a look around the local region to see what other golf facilities are available to visitors. With that in mind, we dropped in to see another four courses located close to the city of Florence.

Ugolino

Ugolino is the oldest golf club in Italy, dating back to 1889, but the club moved in 1934 to a new site in the Chianti hills, half an hour’s drive south of Florence city centre. Designed by Peter Gannon and Cecil Blandford, the course is short, hilly and mostly tree lined, with fairways often plunging down from elevated tee positions then climbing up to small greens.

The 40th edition of the Italian Open was played here in 1983, when Bernhard Langer beat Ken Brown and Seve Ballesteros in a playoff. Today, it offers an intimate golf experience – one to be savoured by golfers who don’t just want to blast away mindlessly off the tee – with holes draped across beautifully rolling terrain.

Le Pavoniere

An hour away from Ugolino, on the other side of Florence, is where you’ll find Le Pavoniere Golf & Country Club, located just outside the city of Prato. The landscape’s rather flat in this part of the region so a fair amount of soil was shifted to fashion the fairways, creating several interconnected lakes which add both strategic and aesthetic interest.

The Arnold Palmer Design Company laid out the course in the mid-1980s, with water coming into play at half the holes on the scorecard. It’s definitely lush parkland golf that’s on offer here with wide, gently undulating playing corridors (separated by a variety of different types of maturing trees) which lead to large, sensibly contoured greens.

Poggio dei Medici

In the hills fifty kilometres northeast of Le Pavoniere lies the course at Poggio dei Medici, close to where the Mugello Circuit is used for car and motorbike racing. The course first opened for play thirty years ago, designed by Alvise Rossi Fioravanti and Baldovino Dassu, and it hosted five consecutive editions of the Ladies Italian Open, starting in 1999.

It’s evident there’s been a lack of investment in the infrastructure and/or manpower for a while now but Marco Maiani, the Director of Golf, is confident the new owners who have recently taken over the property will be able to build on the bones of a well-constructed layout to revive the fortunes of this sleeping giant.

Castelfalfi

To the southwest of Florence, halfway towards the coastal town of Livorno, sits the 27-hole golf facility at Castelfalfi Golf Club. The original course was inaugurated in 1991 but after substantial remodelling by Wilfried Moroder and Rainer Pressman a decade ago, the 9-hole Lake and 18-hole Mountain courses emerged, with a new clubhouse positioned at the centre of the two new layouts.

The Lake course is a tough track but the Mountain course is even more difficult, with a slope rating of 151 from the back tees. Don’t expect to play resort golf here as this is a real serious test of golf with holes winding through valleys, along ridges and plummeting down to heavily water-protected greens – be prepared to be severely challenged if you ever tee it up at Castelfalfi!

Jim McCann

Editor

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