Invitation to Tuscany - Villa Matchmaking

Casa
Italia
Casole d'Elsa
Invitation to Tuscany - Villa Matchmaking

Personal villa recommendations from a family-run business with decades of experience. We’re a small team with deep roots in the region.

Invitation to Tuscany is a family-run villa company founded in 1982, built on genuine local knowledge and long-standing relationships with Italian homeowners. What began with my mother, Susan Wrightson, has grown into a trusted, independent service dedicated to helping people find the kind of villas you don’t come across on booking sites — places with soul, history, and a real sense of place. For

over 20 years, I’ve continued what she started - drawing on decades of personal connections and firsthand experience to match each client with a villa that truly suits them. Over time, we’ve built close relationships with villa owners and now work with nearly 200 hand-picked properties across Italy - each chosen for its unique charm, character, and setting. Every recommendation I make is personal. I listen to what matters to you, then use my knowledge of each home to find one that fits — not just in size or location, but in atmosphere and feeling. If you’ve got a vision, I’ve got the villa

21/08/2025

Exploring the small museum in Casole d’Elsa - it’s astounding to find work of this calibre in such a small village. It’s always a delight to visit.

24/07/2025

I'm Dan Wrightson and my mother started Invitation to Tuscany in 1982 after falling in love with the region and its people. Over four decades, we’ve built lasting relationships with local villa owners and slowly grown a collection of nearly 200 hand-picked properties all across Italy.

I’ve continued her work with the same philosophy, to really get to know each villa. Not just the layout and amenities, but how it feels to spend time there - the atmosphere that connects the villa to its setting and everything around it.

Doing this well takes more than just experience. It requires genuine care, not just about the logistics, but about the emotions behind someone’s decision to take a trip. Matching guests to villas isn’t transactional for me. It’s personal, shaped by my lifelong love of these places.

That’s why we’ve been so successful in pairing hundreds of guests with villas that genuinely feel right. It comes down to intuition - understanding exactly what someone wants, even when they haven’t quite found the words to describe it themselves.

17/07/2025

I took this drone footage one quiet afternoon at Ginestreto — one of those villas that somehow feels hidden, even in the middle of open countryside.

You get these wonderful lines of cypress trees all around, and the house itself sits in a pocket of green with almost complete privacy. No neighbours, no traffic, just birdsong and the wind moving through the olive trees.

Just right for a small group or family. You can see how the lawn becomes the natural heart of the place — great for kids running around, or just lying in the sun with a book and a glass of something cold.

We’ve known this one for a long time, and it still feels special every time we visit.

17/07/2025

Here are a few photos from the living nativity in Casole d'Elsa. The entire town gets into the spirit, transforming the streets into a little slice of Bethlehem. I was there that year, playing the role of a shepherd myself!⁠
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It's well worth visiting!

17/07/2025

This is my sister and me getting a lift in an APE, the workhorse of Italian farmers. With a two-stroke engine, plenty of space for load-carrying and still light enough to be lifted out of trouble on the rough country roads, it was a ubiquitous vehicle.

17/07/2025

New photos for the beautiful Palazzo Giustiniani, a stone palace in the Salento region of Puglia, the end of Italy's heel stretching towards Greece. A light touch restoration has made this historic building into an elegant place to stay, with airy rooms and a private pool in the internal stone courtyards.

I was last there at the end of 2023 and hope to make it back there this spring, it's a very special place.

17/07/2025

"We recently spent a week at Aceronina with members of our family, celebrating major birthdays and important anniversaries. We could hardly have chosen a better location! The views go on forever in several directions, and never failed to delight, even on the day when storm clouds came sweeping in from the south.⁠
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The accommodation is spacious and extremely well equipped and comfortable, and the kitchen has everything you could ask for if you want to cook for yourself. However, you would be denying yourself a great deal if you didn’t explore at least some of the fine restaurants to be found in the area. We really enjoyed dinner at Osteria Rinaldi, in Piazze, just 5 minutes down the road, and the carnivores in the group raved about the mixed grill enjoyed at the restaurant at the castle in Radicofani. However, the highlight was the celebratory dinner prepared and served for us “at home”. We really appreciated all the help received from Invitation to Tuscany in booking the week, and specially in helping organise our special dinner.⁠"
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A review of Aceronina

17/07/2025

To continue last week's theme of the massive depopulation caused by the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth-century, this is a sketch I made of Siena from the top of the unfinished cathedral. In 1339 plans were made for an ambitious expansion of the current Cathedral, and works were started in 1340, just eight years before the plague would visit the city and lay waste to any plans. Today all that remains is the tall wall that would have been the new end of the nave, and some columns embedded in the next door Palazzo.

Visit the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo to climb this tall section of wall and see the city from above, with Piazza del Campo laid out below in a clear signal of the primacy of the church over the state. The museum itself is fabulous, with works by Duccio, Giovanni Pisano, Donatello, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti and many more. Highly recommended.

17/07/2025

Our grandparents visiting Timignano in 1975, slightly puzzled as to why their daughter had chosen to live in a ruin in Tuscany, but enjoying it nonetheless. The dog is Sheba, the sister is Sally and the kid is "Billy the kid".

Chicken models own.

Indirizzo

Piazza Della Libertà, 5
Casole D'Elsa
53031

Sito Web

https://www.invitationtotuscany.com/

Notifiche

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