Pinocchio at the Relais & Châteaux resort

Several years ago I guessed that Il Borro, the restored hamlet owned by the Ferragamo family and part of the Relais & Chateaux group of luxury hotels, might be a really nice place during my then 93-year old mother’s heart valve replacement. I returned to California for her procedure and in the preliminary meeting, when the team of surgeons and cardiologists learned that I lived in Tuscany, everything stopped while they told me in great detail about their various family vacations in this far-away paradise called Il Borro. Excuse me, but don’t you have work to do, like on my mother?

Now that I live about 45-minutes away I’ve visited a couple of times to eat and wander around but somehow had missed the whole point of the place. It’s not the ancient hamlet, perched on a rock outcropping, which has been restored to within an inch of its life, or the infinity pool, or the spa treatments, or winery, or olive groves, but the most interesting thing is a tucked-away collection of animatronic Pinocchios created by the parish priest who lived there years before it was purchased by the Ferragamos. Father Pasquale Mencattini first built a mechanized nativity scene in the 1950s, followed by small tableaus of traditional Tuscany—this one is in a tavern.

But I think his masterpieces are the Pinocchio scenes.

Built within TV sets they are stashed in a small cellar. The general public can see them, you just have to ask reception.

While writing this I also discovered that The Adventures of Pinocchio, written by the Italian Carlo Collodi, was first published as a serialized story in a newspaper of children’s stories in 1881 and became instantly popular. The collected stories were put into book form in 1883 and it’s reputed to be the most translated book in the world, after the Bible, and is one of the best-selling books of all time.

But back to Il Borro. Would I suggest staying there? I am a complete sucker for any Relais & Chateaux experience, but I’d have to say no. Not if you want to actually visit Italy. The resort is all about the curated and imagined Italian experience as opposed to the real one—the hamlet even comes complete with a collection of artisans at work—but give me a coffee at a not-too-clean bar filled with cinghiale hunters any day.