Santa Maddalena: the Tuscan retreat that inspired Bernardo Bertolucci, Bruce Chatwin and more
Refuge, confessional, sanctuary: Santa Maddalena has been called many things. Hidden beyond the village of Donnini, just half an hour from Florence, Italy, this creative retreat in the Tuscan countryside has been inspiring writers and filmmakers since 1967. Everyone from Bernardo Bertolucci to Bruce Chatwin has called it home, and it continues to provide an environment of quiet contemplation for novelists, poets and directors to this day.
“The place is very unexpected,” Bertolucci said of Santa Maddalena. “You drive from Donnini, a little village, on a very uncomfortable road. You get to a wood, and then there is a wall covered with leaves, and somewhere in the wall a little door, and maybe in the door there is Beatrice waiting for you…”
Beatrice Monti della Corte grew up on Capri in the Bay of Naples. As an adolescent, she befriended the various intellectuals who found themselves drawn to the island’s rugged shores. In 1955, she founded the Galleria Dell’Ariete in Milan, where she exhibited Francis Bacon, Antoni Tàpies, Lucio Fontana, Robert Rauschenberg, Sam Francis, Castellani and Manzoni.
Then, in 1967, she married filmmaker, broadcaster and author of over 20 novels Gregor von Rezzori. That same year, she and her husband ventured to Tuscany, where they happened upon a lonely stone tower laced with ivy. After lovingly restoring the house and tower to its former glory, Santa Maddalena was born. For 30 years, it was their haven. Perched above a wooded ravine filled with oak and chestnut, it offered complete seclusion from the outside world.
“We know that love affairs—apart from pleasure, a swiftly beating heart, and occasional moments of pure exaltation—can also give us anxiety, depression, sometimes even rage,” Beatrice wrote in her book, A Tower in Tuscany. “I have received all that from my house as well…. Ours is a love affair that started in 1967, when my husband, Grisha, and I saw it for the first time.”
Bruce Chatwin – author of Songlines, In Patagonia and On The Black Hill – was a regular visitor to Beatricia and Gregor’s Tuscan home. When he wasn’t travelling, he hauled up in their tower, where he would write well into the gloaming hour.
“I have tried to write in such places as an African mud hut (with a wet towel tied on my head), an Athonite monastery, a writers’ colony, a moorland cottage, even a tent,” Chatwin writes in What Am I Doing Here? “But whenever the dust storms come, the rainy season sets in, or a pneumatic drill destroys all hope of concentration, I curse myself and ask: what am I doing here? Why am I not at the Tower?”
Chatwin’s love of Santa Maddalena caused Beatrice to question whether the house and grounds might be put to better use. So, when Gregor died in 1993, she set to work on creating the Santa Maddalena Foundation, a place that offers writers the chance to work in the most tranquil environment imaginable. So far, it has hosted over 170 guests, including Zadie Smith, Michael Cunningham, Edmund White and Michael Ondaatje.
Santa Maddelena has also hosted the likes of Ralph Fiennes, who was invited to stay in the tower after being introduced to Beatrice and Gregor while filming The English Patient.
Fiennes recalled: “We were filming, I think, in Viareggio and on the Sunday, when we were not working, we drove over, and I remember the journey down the track to the house and being greeted by Gregor and Beatrice, and this extraordinary atmosphere of this hidden jewel of a house on this Tuscan hillside.
“I remember the charm, of Gregor and Beatrice I remember this extraordinary atmosphere. Unique. Like a concentration of energy that two people have created in one house. Beautiful things – beautiful objects – but a place where you immediately felt that the rest of the world disappeared. Something like a sanctuary.”
