Il Castello di San Ruffino

The staff was very helpful and kind. The castle is beutiful and the rooms are good. The frist night we arived late and ate at the hotel bistro. We were plesantly surprised by the good food and hospitality of the cheifs and waitress. We rented a car an took daytrips to surrounding attractions like Pisa, Cinque terre and Lier. Cinque terre is a quite long ride. The other days we chose to vist places closer to san ruffino. We enjoyed our stay! Thank you very much.

What an amazing resort this was! Staying in a castle brings a whole new level of luxury to one’s travel. Rooms were spectacular, enormous, clean, extremely comfortable. Although off the beaten path, it was worth the hour drive to Florence to stay in the beautiful Tuscan countryside at this phenomenal palace. Highly recommend this adults only resort.

Also known as Il Castello Di San Ruffino, the hotel is very special. What stands out is the magnificent grounds and excellent staff. The rooms are also large and charming, and the beds and bedding are very comfortable. Don't hesitate to ask for anything from the wonderful ladies who run reception.

This is wild! I stayed at this place this summer and added a - in my opinion - fair review on the boking.com page after our stay. I gave them a rating of 7, explained why, and I felt I was being generous. The owner decided to be absolutely uncivilized in response, which tells you everything you need to know about them, very "classy and tasteful" as they would say. Idk what is so prestigious about a busted plywood wardrobe and dresser. Everything was already slightly bent. Or maybe a giant Minnie Mouse painting with a fake Louis Vuitton border. I said "all deluxe suites" look like this, instead of "this one", because when I went to see if there was a mistake when assigning us our room, because I couldn't believe there was anything "deluxe" about it, the MANAGER told me that he doesn't know what I'm talking about because all those rooms look like this. So which is it now? Haha, yeah we got the coffee machine after complaining (not the rest of the promised amenities mind you) but it was all dirty and disgusting. About the upgrade we got - I appreciate it, really I do. And my rating reflects that. It's also not like we got the upgrade straight away. My complaints were rudely dismissed and only when my husband went to argue, we got the upgrade. But I can't with clear conscience give a deluxe suite (which I booked) a higher rating. I don't want to mislead other travelers, given this place has an inflated rating already. And thank you for judging me while knowing nothing about me. I actually stayed in many pretty and unique boutique hotels with a soul and charm. But this place has none of that.

When I look at the review of Castello San Ruffino, I am struck that pre-covid the reviews are mostly all positive but more recently are mixed. Maybe the hotel suffered financially in that period. In any event, our experience overall was good but there are some caveats. To start, the room we had was quite large, in fact really two rooms and a large bathroom. One of the rooms was a bedroom and the other had a chest of drawers and a closet. The ceiling of the bedroom was decorated with a painting and there was interesting remote controlled lighting under the bed. The bed was comfortable and the room was clean. The breakfast was the best we have had in Italy and the dinner we had (included in our package) was good though not exceptional. We were also offered the use of a locked room for our bicycles, which was very convenient. We also were offered late checkout even though we did not ask for it. Finally, the hotel is in a very small hamlet. The area is very quiet and we had a great view. We really enjoyed doing a cycling loop to Lari and down to the valley before climbing back up. The major negative from our viewpoint was the poor internet. It was possible to access the internet in the common room, though it was a little iffy. Up in the bedroom, it did not work most of the time. Installing wired repeater could readily solve the problem. The other issue, is that while the bedroom was quite large, there was no place to sit other than the bed. It would have been nice to have a desk with a chair. Also no safe or refrigerator. If it wasn't for the wifi, we would have given the hotel 5-stars because of the hotel's charm though it is not the typical 4-star hotel. My view is that if you can get a room at the right price it is worth it. We had a package that was well below listed prices.

This was a terrible experience - it is not worth it. The photos are a couple years outdated and very misleading. The room was not clean and had a musty smell. We did not end up staying. We arrived there after driving through the beautiful countryside to arrive at a picturesque location. Check-in was messy, as there was only one person at the desk who closed up after every guest to bring them to their room before helping the next guest. The woman was very kind and helpful about the area while checking us in and then told us to pay for our whole stay in advance. This did strike us as odd, but we paid in good faith. Afterwards we were brought to the room and and she quickly disappeared before we could enter. We had booked one of the junior suites. Upon entering we immediately noticed a very musty smell and the fact that the suite looked extremely old. There were water stains on the ceiling (peeling paint) and the walls, the couch had shreds for fabric and the room was not clean (stain on pillow, dirty bathroom floor, toilet paper was wet (?), unclean shower head, and the filter of the heater/airco was never cleaned… I can go on). This is not acceptable for a four star hotel. In addition, we had been told we would be responsible for cleaning the kitchen as this was not included in the rate. This dirty room, water damage and smell left us with little hope as to the state of what we could not see in the walls… When confronting the woman at the desk she acted very defensive and refused to believe me. We evidently no longer wanted to stay at the property, even in a different room. They refused even a partial refund for our 6 night stay and became more aggressive. We left and booked another hotel last minute instead. We did not see any money back, which is regrettable but preferable over having to spend the night there. This is NOT worth the four star rating! Additional remark: reviews were very negative over the summer and then suddenly we noticed a number of positive reviews (all 5/5 or 100%) without additional text. This seems fishy to us, so therefore I decided to leave this long review to warn other travelers.