This Luxury Hotel in a 16th-century Italian Monastery Feels Like a Museum With Provocative New Art Installations

Villa San Michele, A Belmond Hotel, just outside Florence, Italy, has a new collection of artwork that beautifully contrasts the Renaissance frescoes decorating the resort.

High in the hills outside Florence, something strange and unexpected is happening. Among the Renaissance frescoes and ecclesiastical carvings of Villa San Michele, A Belmond Hotel, a luxury hotel set in a 16th-century monastery, an entirely different group of artworks has materialized.

At the hotel’s entrance, where a stone arch frames a postcard-perfect view of the Duomo, you’ll find the first of them: an eerily lifelike figure of a man, wearing a suit and sitting in an armchair. The only clue he isn’t real? A massive block of stone obscuring his head.

The piece is one of three that make up “Teenager & Teenager,” a provocative installation by Beijing-based duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. It runs until Oct. 29, which is the end of the hotel's 2023 season. Inside the hotel, the series continues with a group of three elegantly dressed figures seated on a leather sofa in one lounge area; in another, a couple in evening wear is arranged around a chaise. In each case, the statue’s heads are fully encased in rock.

The works are themed around identity and technology, explained Sophie Fabiani, the Villa San Michele’s public relations manager, as she showed me around the property one balmy summer evening before the light faded. “The big rocks on top of their heads represent the burden technology can be. We think it enables connection, but it can also isolate us,” she said. “We’re sending the message that this is our human nature at the moment, but try to go beyond that and experience the beauty of the environment, and the beauty of the relationships around you.”

Villa San Michele is one of seven Belmond properties taking part in a series of art installations known as "Mitico." (Also participating are Castello di Casole in Tuscany, Hotel Cipriani in Venice, Grand Hotel Timeo in Sicily, Le Manoir aux Quat’Siasons in England, La Residencia on Mallorca, and the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro.) It’s the second consecutive year the hotel has put up a contemporary art installation; both editions were curated by Galleria Continua, a contemporary art space born in the Tuscan town of San Gimignano that now has locations in cities including Rome, Paris, Beijing, and São Paolo.

As Fabiani and I were discussing one of the pieces from “Teenager & Teenager,” two guests entered the room and noticed the installation for the first time. They immediately began laughing incredulously and taking photos. Fabiani said this reaction was common. “We haven’t received negative comments,” she said. “The pieces bring a smile, they invite dialogue.”

Elsewhere on the property, two pieces from the 2022 edition of "Mitico" are still on display, both by an Argentinian artist named Leandro Erlich. The first is a series of stacked glass panels on which screen-printed images create the impression of a cloud. Being British, I smiled at the plaque at the bottom of the case bearing the words, United Kingdom. The piece is positioned directly under a 17th-century fresco of the last supper painted by an artist from Fiesole, the town Villa San Michele is located in.

Erlich’s second piece, "Window & Ladder," is installed in the hotel’s gardens, where guests gathered for aperitivi on the terrace and the scent of jasmine wafted on the breeze. It’s a perfectly lifelike window complete with Italian-style wooden shutters and brick surround, elevated 15 feet or so off the ground, and held in place by a ladder. The window itself perfectly frames the rooftops of Florence and, of course, their centerpiece: Brunelleschi’s Duomo.

“This is the window on the city,” Fabiani explained. “When Leandro Erlich came here he said that the history of art really started with the Renaissance, and from here you have a full view of what the Renaissance means. It’s a window on the future, but also on the history of art.” The piece has been so popular, Fabiani added, and feels so integrated into the fabric of Villa San Michele, the hotel purchased it last year and has put it on permanent display.

“We haven’t had many people try to climb it, just a couple of times last year,” Fabiani laughed. “But on the whole our guests behave very well!”

You can book your room at Villa San Michele at belmond.com; doubles from $3,250 a night.

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