Andrea Bocelli’s Italian villa is his favorite place to vacation, and it’s no wonder why — it used to be a hotel!
When the opera superstar isn’t on the road, performing for fans around the world, he says, he can most often be found at his stately pink palace, Villa Alpemare, on the coast of Tuscany.
And the house has a long history of welcoming weary travelers. It was a hotel from after World War II until the late 1990s, when he purchased it. Before that, it was likely home to one of the area’s aristocratic families, who spent summers in the area.
Valentina Sommariva
At the end of the nineteenth century, Bocelli says, “the patrician villas had direct access to the sea, and the butlers would set up everything required for a refreshing dip or an alfresco dinner on the beach.”
Today, the everyday happenings here are a bit more casual. Bocelli shares the home with his wife, actress Veronica Berti Bocelli, and their three children, Amos, Matteo, and Virginia, and runs a beach club across the street.
The performer calls the house “elegant yet unpretentious house. [It’s] a welcoming home that is large enough for us to live and work in, make music, and host many friends.”
It serves all those purposes well, as each floor has a designated use. The first contains rooms for entertaining, the second has his personal music studio, and the third is for the family’s private quarters.
And after restoring the place top-to-bottom with help from his architect brother, Alberto, Bocelli plans to stay a while.
“I am very attached to this house,” he says. “I feel that it resembles me.”
Read the full feature and see more photos onarchdigest.com.
source: people.com
