Rome, Florence, Venice. Everyone goes. And they should — these cities are staggering. But the Italy that shaped our Italian Collection — the stone, the wood, the craft — lives in places most Americans have never heard of. Towns where the architecture hasn't been touched in 400 years, where artisans still work in tufa caves, and where the food isn't trying to impress you because it doesn't need to.
Matera, Basilicata
One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth. The Sassi di Matera — a network of cave dwellings carved into a limestone gorge — date to the Paleolithic era. Until the 1950s, families lived in these caves with their livestock. The Italian government evacuated the entire district. Today, those same caves have been transformed into some of the most extraordinary hotels in Europe. Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita preserves the raw stone with candlelight and minimal intervention. Aquatio Cave Luxury Hotel layers contemporary design into thousand-year-old rock. No other place on earth looks like this.
Pietrasanta, Tuscany
The world capital of marble sculpture, a few kilometers inland from the Versilia coast. Michelangelo sourced his marble here. Today the town has more sculptors per square meter than any place on earth, with over 60 works in its International Park of Contemporary Sculpture. The same artisan foundries and marble workshops that produce museum-quality sculpture also produce the stone surfaces found in high-end interiors worldwide. Walk Via Garibaldi and you'll see studios working in materials you can recognize in our Ceppo and Socle collections. This is where the material becomes the design.
Lecce, Puglia
Called "the Florence of the South" for its Baroque architecture — but the comparison sells it short. Lecce's Baroque is carved from honey-colored local limestone that was soft when quarried and hardened with air exposure, allowing 17th-century craftsmen to carve facades that look like lacework in stone. The Basilica di Santa Croce is the masterpiece, but the entire city center is an unbroken study in what happens when material, craft, and ambition align perfectly.
Grottaglie, Puglia
A ceramics town with a tradition stretching to ancient Greek settlement. About 50 active workshops operate in the Quartiere delle Ceramiche — not a tourist ceramics town selling souvenirs, but a working artisan district where family-run workshops spill into cobbled alleyways and some artisans throw clay in studios carved into ancient tufa caves. For anyone in the interiors world, this is a sourcing destination as much as a travel one. Forty minutes from Lecce, 45 from Ostuni.
The Langhe, Piedmont
A UNESCO World Heritage landscape of rolling vineyard hills, medieval castle towns, and hazelnut groves. The heart of Barolo and Barbaresco. But beyond the wine, the Langhe is Italy's highest expression of terroir as design philosophy — the idea that place, material, and craft are inseparable. The medieval hilltop villages are built from local stone in ochre and rust tones that mirror the landscape. October and November bring white truffle season and autumn foliage that turns the hills into something approaching the unreasonable. Casa di Langa is the design-forward resort to book.
Noto, Sicily
After a catastrophic earthquake leveled the original town in 1693, architects rebuilt Noto from scratch in a unified Sicilian Baroque vision using golden limestone. The result is an entire city that reads as a single design composition — not a town that accumulated beauty over centuries, but one that was intentionally designed as a complete aesthetic statement. The Corso Vittorio Emanuele is one of the great designed streetscapes of Europe. Palazzo Castelluccio is being transformed by Rocco Forte into a 31-key luxury residence opening in 2026.
Ostuni, Puglia
La Citta Bianca — the White City. Every building whitewashed in lime against deep blue sky. The tradition was originally antibacterial, but the visual result is stunningly graphic: white on white on white, with deep shadows creating natural chiaroscuro. The surrounding countryside is defined by ancient olive trees — some over a thousand years old — and the distinctive trulli stone huts of the Itria Valley. Vista Ostuni, a new five-star property in a restored 14th-century palazzo, opened in 2025 with rooftop views and a Michelin-starred kitchen.
The Brianza District, Lombardy
This one is for the furniture people. Between Milan and Lake Como, the towns of Meda, Cantu, and Lissone form the manufacturing heartland of Italian design. Cassina, Molteni, B&B Italia, Poliform — the most important names in furniture are headquartered here. The tradition began when noble families building villas between Milan and Como needed exceptional woodworking. By the 1950s, Brianza produced a third of all furniture manufactured in Italy. The Molteni Museum is open by appointment. For anyone who cares about how great furniture gets made, this is the pilgrimage.
The Italian Collection — the Liscio, the Ceppo, the Nuvola, the Tela — draws from this world. Natural materials that age beautifully. Forms that trust the material to speak for itself. A design tradition rooted in the land it comes from.
