In Italy, hell is not other people. It’s the crowds. You can’t escape them. Or the lines. Or the noise.
Which is why Vocabolo Moscatelli is such a gift. Tucked away in the green and gentle rolling hills of Umbria and comprising some buildings that were, until recently, the remains of a 12th-century monastery situated between Arezzo and the medieval town of Perugia, it is now a modern-day sanctuary of serenity. It’s the kind of place that you’ve always longed to discover in the Italian countryside. Best of all, there are so few people that you can’t help but feel the place is all your own.
The lack of visitors is not for want of demand. Since “VocMos,” as it is known, opened a little more than a year ago, it has quickly become a sought-after booking among in-the-know design-heads. No, what accounts for the low number of guests is that there are only 12 rooms spread among four painstakingly revived buildings secluded on nearly three acres.
“To us, the future of hospitality is smaller,” says co-owner Frederik Kubierschky, who was born in Germany but moved to Italy as a child. “So many places are beautiful, but you stiffen up when you step on the grounds. We wanted to offer the excellence and uniqueness that this generation expects, but not get bogged down in stuffiness.”
Kubierschky and his effervescent partner, Catharina Lütjens, dreamed for years of opening a boutique hotel in Italy but could never find the right location. The couple met while working at a hotel in Zurich and in their spare time would search for potential properties to buy. A friend steered them toward the monastery, run-down and overgrown; in the fall, locals in search of truffles had taken to walking the grounds with their dogs.
Kubierschky and Lütjens took possession in 2019 and used the lockdowns to power through an ambitious renovation. The result is nothing less than what you could consider the next generation of Italian country estates. It’s elegant but also intimate and approachable in all the right ways.
The traditional touches—stone fireplaces, beamed ceilings, wooden floors that are soft on the feet—have been preserved, but Kubierschky and Lütjens have decorated the rooms in midcentury Italian style, with hand-glazed ceramic tiles from a local artist and four-poster beds fashioned by a fourth-generation blacksmith. Some of the suites in the main building have soaking baths on their secluded loggias, while each of the four rooms in the annex building has small, semi-secluded gardens.
As captivating as the rooms are, the grounds are just as unique. While locals no longer forage for truffles, Kubierschky and Lütjens have added freestanding flower gardens, pea-gravel paths lined with rosemary bushes that will lead you to the pool, lined in travertine, and a shade-drenched 100-foot-long pergola that’s already been the site of more than a few wedding receptions. They’ve also planted a garden for the kitchen, where they have re-introduced long-forgotten varieties of apple and other heritage trees that are native to Umbria.
Oh, and then there’s the food. As part of the “relaxed luxury” vibe Kubierschky and Lütjens want to create, they have made small shifts in service, starting with breakfast. As Kubierschky says, “You know that feeling when you are in a hotel and you are having a peaceful morning—but then you feel the pressure to get down to breakfast before it closes? Why does a hotel make you start your day feeling the pressure to get to breakfast?” So they eliminated that. Breakfast is available anytime. And no matter when you have it, here’s a pro tip: take it under the shade of the ancient oak tree that towers over the rear of the grounds.
Dinners are also terrific, with a menu that focuses on modern Italian food and changes daily, depending on the ingredients available at the market. There’s also a cozy lobby bar with a smart selection of local wines as well as cocktails.
The attention to detail and to how the intelligent customer travels today also means that, unlike many country hotels in Italy, this one does not close in October. Instead, Vocabolo Moscatelli remains open through New Year’s Day, so a late-season visit is possible before it reopens in March. (Who knows? You might even find some truffles underfoot.)
VocMos is a place where no kindness is overlooked. There was the moment my wife and I were dreading: we weren’t simply leaving; we had a 4:30 a.m. pickup for the ride that would take us to our flight home from Rome. But as we passed through the lobby and expected to drop the key on an unattended desk, we found Kubierschky waiting to say farewell. He smiled and hugged us and then pressed two freshly made ham-and-cheese toasted sandwiches, boxed for the road, into our hands. “Homemade food is always better,” he said.
It’s the kind of touch that’s so thoughtful and all too rare. The kind of detail that already has us dreaming of returning.
Michael Hainey is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL and a co-host of its Morning Meeting podcast