Finding Gioiella: The Hilltop Village That Felt Like Home

Depending on who you ask, Gioiella means either “little gem” or “little slice of joy”. There’s also a local yarn that the village was named for a beautiful innkeeper who once lived here.

Soon after arriving for the first time, I found myself believing all explanations could be true!

Long before Villa Gioiella existed, finding a home in Italy became an unexpected two-year search across Tuscany and Umbria. It meant long summer days washed in dusty blue light, espresso standing at crowded bars, Negronis at aperitivo hour. Hard, I know…

There were also endless train journeys through central Italy. Fast trains. Slow trains. Delayed trains. Packed regional trains that had me majorly paranoid that I would never arrive before nightfall.

This was in the day before Google Maps, and I travelled without speaking more than a handful of Italian words, carrying maps I barely understood and always bringing the wrong shoes for hill towns made entirely of stone. I was hard-wired for la bella figura before I knew la bella figura was a thing. Between the vineyards, ancient villages and station platforms, I knew I was searching for more than a house.

I was searching for a feeling.

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Searching for La Dolce Vita

Before that first trip, I stopped and asked myself what I actually hoped to find in Italy.

Closing my eyes, I imagined sun-warmed piazzas and long conversations spilling out onto village streets. I longed for history, architecture, community, a slow version of life. What I found was so much more – olive trees moving softly in the breeze. The heady smell of sun-kissed tomatoes, basil on the breeze and woodsmoke drifting through kitchen windows. Truffles shaved over pasta. Fresh olive oil so green it tasted so wild it ravished my mouth.

After years of feeling compressed into an increasingly smaller version of myself, I longed for places where life still seemed expressive and communal. Places where people argued openly, laughed loudly, lingered over meals and treated beauty as part of everyday life rather than a luxury.

And for reasons I couldn’t entirely explain, one word kept appearing in my mind: Tuscany.

At the time, I had never even been there.

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The Villages Between Tuscany and Umbria

Over the following months, I crossed central Italy searching…

The journey led through the Apennines, along goat trails, through chestnut forests and winding back roads, past ancient Etruscan towns perched high above the valleys below. I walked through villages where old men still sang softly in dialect on trains and where lunchtime could stretch lazily into evening.

I found countless houses along the way.

Beautiful houses. Strange houses. Ruins with impossible views. Farmhouses wrapped in vineyards. Stone villas hidden behind cypress trees.

But none of them felt like ‘the one’.

The places that stayed with me most were often the quieter villages near Lake Trasimeno, where Tuscany slowly begins to blur into Umbria. This corner of Italy feels different from the polished postcard version many travellers expect. The landscapes are softer, the pace slower, and everyday life still feels deeply rooted in the villages themselves.

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Finding Gioiella

By the time I found Gioiella, I had almost stopped expecting to find anything at all.

It was late autumn. Grape harvests had finished and olive nets stretched beneath silver trees across the hills. I thought I had already seen every possible farmhouse and villa for sale between Tuscany and Umbria. Francesa and Titi, my magnificent real estate agents and I had wined, dined, and laughed our way around Umbria and Tuscany.

Then, on one of the final days of viewing, we arrived in the tiny hilltop village called Gioiella.

Gioiella

The road wound past towering cipressi, vineyards and olive groves along what was once an ancient Etruscan road, between Montepulciano and Cortona. The village itself sat quietly above the landscape, surrounded by rolling countryside and distant lakes.

I still remember the colours first.

Soft pink walls. Faded yellow houses. Grey-blue shutters glowing in the late afternoon light.

We turned beside the village church, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, and pulled into a narrow driveway steps from the local bar.

Then I saw it.

An old brick villa stands quietly behind the piazza, its uneven walls catching the autumn sun. On one side, the village. On the other side, sweeping views across Tuscany and the Valdichiana.

It felt hidden and expansive all at once.

That was the moment I knew.

Not because it was perfect. Not because it was grand. Not even because every brick was forged and put in to place by late Renaissance builders. Although all those things certainly helped. It was more

It carried the exact feeling I had been searching for all along. Home

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Why This Corner of Italy Still Feels Different

Years later, what I love most about Gioiella is still the rhythm of life here.

Mornings begin slowly. Someone stops for coffee at the village bar. Fresh bread arrives at the local shop. Church bells drift across the hills while sunlight moves over the olive trees. I’ve often pondered how strange it is that in a place where church bells so often remind you of time, that time seems devoid of meaning

By afternoon, you can be wine tasting in Montepulciano, wandering the streets of Cortona, or swimming and boating near Lake Trasimeno.

The evening returns quietly to the village again, and it is the tough choice between sunset on the balcony or a laugh with the locals at the Bar

This part of Italy still feels connected to older rhythms. Less polished. Less hurried. More human.

And that, ultimately, is what Villa Gioiella became about.

Not simply a place to stay, but a way to experience the quieter side of Tuscany and Umbria.

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Villa Gioiella Today

Some places stamp a brand upon your heart

Others settle into you slowly, until one day you realise you can no longer imagine yourself anywhere else.

Gioiella was somehow both for me. Amore a prima vista that grew into a long term passion

Staying at Villa Gioiella means experiencing this authentic side of Italy for yourself — hilltop villages, vineyard roads, long evenings, and the gentle rhythm of life between Tuscany and Umbria.

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