Hotel · Volterra, Tuscany · 2024

Waking a house

The renewal of a sixty-six-room Tuscan hotel. The house had to be brought back to life — from the survey to the outline building permit.

The brief

An existing house had to be brought back to life. The work was not a new concept; it was a hotel that had to work again — and a scheme that had to be permitted.

Volterra hands you two things ready-made: the town has been cutting the same stone for two and a half thousand years, and the hills still look the way they looked in the sixties. Either turns easily into costume. That was what we set out to avoid.

The answer

We mixed the Tuscan register with the lightness of la dolce vita, and let the Etruscan layer show in proportion rather than ornament — low, wide, unhurried.

The materials are the ones this landscape supplies anyway: alabaster, timber beams, lime plaster, terracotta. Earth colours throughout, with a pinch of fire — enough red to wake a room, not enough to raise its voice.

Alabaster has been cut here since the third century BC; the Etruscans made their urns from this stone, and the workshops never stopped. It appears not as a quotation but as light: the wall behind the reception desk is backlit stone.

Sixty-six rooms, not one of them a suite, averaging under nineteen square metres. In an existing building the room size, the structure and the openings are given: space cannot be added with furniture, only with light and with what can be seen. In every room the bed sits on the line of the opening.

The pool sits below the building. Its edge is the last constructed line — past it, the valley.

What it took

The work began with measurement, not drawing. An old building does not match its own drawings, and every decision downstream depends on knowing by how much. The existing hotel was surveyed as a point cloud and built as a digital twin, alongside geodetic survey, soil mechanics and site inspection.

On that base came the full technical review: thermal and energy performance calculations, a shading study, revision of the insulation, structural design and landscape design. In a building like this these are not items that follow one another — insulation thickness moves an opening, shading moves a façade, structure moves a ceiling height.

Alabaster is its own problem. Mohs 1.5 to 2 — a fingernail marks it — slightly soluble in water, and detergent strips the translucency. So it appears only where it is backlit, dry and out of reach.

The scheme received its outline building permit.

Location: Volterra, Tuscany, Italy
Year: 2024
Type: Hotel renovation and reopening
Scope: Full interior design and architecture for renovation
Survey: Point cloud · digital twin · geodetic survey · soil mechanics · site inspection
Engineering: Thermal and energy calculations · shading study · insulation · structural design · landscape design
Keys: 66 · no suites
Gross floor area: 3,863 m²
Net floor area: 3,476 m²
Total guest-room area: 1,229.09 m² (≈ 18.6 m² per room)
Site: approx. 2.4 ha
Architecture: András Toldi
Status: Outline building permit obtained

Point-cloud survey of the existing hotel, its courtyard and pool, drawn as coloured points against a dark background — The point-cloud survey of the existing hotel. The scheme started here.

Visualisation of the hills around Volterra at sunset: vineyards, cypresses and the hotel on the hilltop — The house on the hilltop above the valley — the landscape still looks the way it looked in the sixties.

Arrival façade at sunset: lime plaster, clay tiles, a turning circle, three red sports cars at the entrance — The arrival side. The massing has not changed — its surface, and what happens around it, has.

Ground-floor loggia with brick piers and timber shutters facing planted beds in evening light — A loggia onto the inner court: brick piers, terracotta floor, timber shutters.

Courtyard pool in front of the three-storey wings, lavender beds and clipped shrubs on the slope — The inner court with the pool. Lavender, evergreen, terracotta — the palette comes from the landscape.

Terracotta terrace with cypresses, iron furniture and a rectangular pool above the Tuscan valley at sunset — The terrace opens to the south-west; at sunset this is where most of the valley shows.

Mosaic-lined infinity pool with a spiral pattern, cypresses and the valley beyond at sunset — The edge of the pool is the last constructed line. Past it, the valley.

Double-height hall with a mosaic floor, a stone column and a red sixties sports car parked inside — Reception hall — mosaic floor, alabaster light, and one object that ties the story to the sixties.

Reception desk in backlit alabaster under exposed timber beams, mosaic floor below — The wall behind the reception desk is alabaster, backlit. Stone by day; after dark, the only light.

Guest room with a mosaic floor, upholstered bed on the window axis, timber desk and black wall lights — Eighteen square metres. The bed on the line of the opening — the room is enlarged by light, not by furniture.

Guest room in lime plaster with a window onto the vineyards, terracotta cushions and a reclaimed timber desk — A room facing the vineyards. The red is only as much as it takes to wake a room.

Barrel-vaulted room with terracotta walls, two arched shuttered windows onto the hills and a rust velvet sofa — A barrel-vaulted room in the old wing, in terracotta plaster.

Architectural elevation and section of the hotel with level annotations: the loggia, the courtyard wing and the pool below. Architect: András Toldi, 2024. — Elevation and section from the survey — the existing massing, the loggia and the level of the pool on one sheet. Architectural concept: András Toldi

Visualisations of a scheme not yet built, not photographs · post-production includes AI-based upscaling and retouching · survey and calculation material is measured or computed data

Ren Design is a Budapest interior design studio working across Europe and the Gulf. On this project it delivered the full interior design and the architectural design for the renovation; the scheme received its outline building permit.