Succession star Villa Cetinale is now as famous as its globetrotting guests
When it comes to the quintessential Tuscan villa, Cetinale has famous fans the world over. Owners the Earl and Countess of Durham share their tale of turning an inherited ‘sleeping beauty’ from the colourful Lord Lambton into a grand agriturismo.
It was once owned by a pope, has hosted King Charles for fish pie, entranced Kate Moss with its ghost stories, and even found a place in the heart of Britain’s master of minimalism, architect John Pawson. Now, in addition to starring in Succession season 3 and being named the “The most beautiful villa in Tuscany” by Architectural Digest, Villa Cetinale is the subject of a new Rizzoli coffee-table tome, Villa Cetinale: Memoir of a House in Tuscany.
Spearheaded by its current owners, Brits Marina and Edward “Ned” Lambton (the 7th Earl of Durham also penned the book), it chronicles not only Cetinale’s exceptional history, but also the couple’s resolve to turn it into a buoyant business after inheriting the dilapidated 17th century estate from Ned’s colourful father, the late Lord Lambton (1922–2006). The 6th Earl of Durham had bought it on a whim in the late 1970s from the ancient Italian Chigi family, who built and owned Cetinale for some 300 years.
“In 1977, aged 15 and somewhat clueless, I was on a flight to Tuscany with my father, the late Lord Lambton, known as Tony to his friends,” writes Ned in the book’s introduction. “We had told my mother that we were going to France to explore Provence. The reason for the deception was that my mother had forbidden me to go to Italy with my father because he had set up home there with Claire Ward, his long-time mistress. “During the flight, my father started to tell me he had just bought an Italian villa called Cetinale. He seemed quite animated as he mumbled about history, architecture, and the pope. I remember thinking, ‘Why is he showing me a new house? I haven’t even seen the old one yet.’ What I had no way of realising at that point was the sheer magnitude of what he had taken on. He may have been disappointed by my apparent lack of interest, but when I first saw Villa Cetinale I was taken aback by its beauty and astonished by its size. Buying a holiday home was one thing; this was something wildly different.”
The region of rural Tuscany where Cetinale is located, some 10km to the west of Siena on the edge of a woodland known as the Montagnola Senese, was historically a wild region inhabited by bandits, and remained a poor pocket at the time Lord Lambton purchased the decaying Roman baroque-style villa.
“I think part of the reason people are interested in this place is my father had a certain sort of notoriety,” reflects Ned on a video call from Casa Marina, the pair’s quaint cottage on the Cetinale estate. In fact Tony, who renounced his title to remain an MP, had resigned from Edward Heath’s government after a sex scandal and planned to live in Tuscany with Ward (mother of Australian actress Rachel Ward). “I mean, he was quite bored out here and liked to make trouble, so he had a certain reputation, which I think made the place more attractive to people in some way.”
Just like the crumbling aristocratic estates of Lord Lambton’s homeland, the finances involved with such a property’s upkeep were and remain ruinous. “It was almost a ruin when he took it on,” Ned reiterates. “When my father died, we couldn’t afford to live in it like he did, and he couldn’t either, but no one really dared tell him and we realised that we had to either sell it or try to make it pay for itself. It’s been a long struggle, but now we’ve emerged at the end of the tunnel, and it’s a great relief,” he says.
That tunnel began with four years of exhaustive restoration work, overseen by the Florentine architect Bolko von Schweinichen, between 2008 and 2012 on the main house, built in 1680 as a hunting lodge for Cardinal Flavio Chigi. “At the beginning it was difficult, because my father was very good at gardening but he didn’t do much of the house. And it needed a new roof, new plumbing, new heating, new wiring …” Ned trails off. “And all those things needed permission, so it was all a bit of a nightmare. You have to get permission to go to the toilet in Italy,” he laments. In fact, Lord Lambton did succeed on the plumbing front, updating the 13-bedroom villa’s single bathroom and adding another nine. Each bedroom now has its own elegant ensuite or adjacent bathroom – an improvement to which this writer can attest.
“We wanted to keep it the same because it had such a lot of charm, but just make it more comfortable with modern amenities,” says Marina, who runs the Cetinale business alongside a small local team. “It was gutted and put back together. It’s taken years, but it’s all good now.”
These days the main house and three adjoining cottages are rented out for most of the year and are booked up until 2025. “My role is to stay out of it, which I’ve been doing very well, and Marina does it,” adds the musician, a member of British band Pearl, TN, of the day-to-day running. “We are starting to make money now – previously we put it back into the place,” Ned says of the constant repairs and maintenance. “It’s never ending, but it’s a very satisfying thing to be involved with. We always make sure that we stay there sometimes as well ourselves for a week, because we don’t want to be doing it purely for financial reasons.”
The family live in London, where their four children, aged three, five, eight and 11, are in school. Despite the commute and the inherent financial burden (an estimated ¤6.5 million invested to date), they say taking on Cetinale was always on the cards: “I always wanted to,” confirms Ned. “I feel a bit smug about the whole thing actually, because everybody we knew said, ‘You can’t do this. It won’t work. You have to sell it. Are you crazy?’ And we said, ‘No, we are going to do it.’ So that’s a good feeling.”
As for what his father would think of the house’s constant hospitality hum as both an agriturismo and, God forbid, wedding venue, “I think he’d say, ‘What are all these people doing in my house? Go away!’” laughs Ned. “But I think he’d have to look at the economics of the situation.
“We never really had too much choice. But I don’t think it’s something he would’ve done. He liked being in the villa and having people visit him – it made him feel important.” And visit they did. Of Prince Charles’s social call during his father’s tenure, Ned says: “I found it quite surprising that they gave him defrosted fish pie. He went to boarding school, so he’s probably quite used to dodgy food. He must have liked the place. I think my father did write a not very complimentary book about Lord Mountbatten, who I know is a great favourite of King Charles. But he did once come to lunch.”
Kate Moss recounts her memories in the book: “I first visited Villa Cetinale in the early 1990s,” she writes. “Tony was the most gracious host. He would come to my room with a glass of 1920s sherry and tell me ghost stories. He was a true original!” Secret rooms and passages continue to add to the house’s mystery. “If only the walls could talk!” laughs Australian fashion designer Rebecca Vallance, who spent a week under the Tuscan sun at Cetinale with her husband’s European family. Even the Nazis left their mark on Cetinale, which was requisitioned in 1944. The fifth chapel remains badly damaged by machine-gun fire. During friendlier times, Princess Margaret, Mick Jagger, Lucien Freud, Rupert Everett and Tony Blair also experienced its pleasures.
That spirit of the eccentric English aristo with a love of the continent certainly runs through the villa, while its interior design was handed over to Camilla Guinness, another Brit with a fondness for the Italian countryside. Her own farmhouse, Arniano, some 40 minutes away near Montalcino, also stars as the backdrop for her daughter Amber Guinness’s painting school and book A House Party In Tuscany.
“We’re very lucky at Cetinale because actually there’s a lot of beautiful villas in Tuscany, and I think it’s [success has] a lot to do with the way Camilla’s done up the house,” Marina reflects. “It’s very luxurious, but it’s always got a lot of soul. She knew the place very well because she was great friends with Tony. Ned’s father had bought some beds and console tables, so there was beautiful furniture already. Camilla was incredibly good at doing the colours on the walls – the bathrooms are just unbelievably beautiful,” she adds, noting that Camilla’s late husband, Jasper Guinness, was also her godfather.
Marina grew up as a family friend of the Lambtons and spent many of her childhood summers at Cetinale, the first of which she remembers being around the age of nine. “I must have come in May,” she recalls. “Ned wasn’t here, it was when his dad was here. We came for lunch and I just remember the absolutely beautiful wisteria, which was out in full bloom. I’ve heard that it’s one of the largest wisterias in Europe. Then I used to come out quite a lot when I was 17, 18, 19, because I was good friends with Tony’s grandchildren. And we always had really fun summers.”
As for their courtship, “I’m 20 years older than Marina and I actually was friends with her parents,” clarifies Ned, who has been married twice before (to Christabel McEwen, now Mrs Jools Holland, then briefly to Catherine Fitzgerald, now Mrs Dominic West). “It sounds rather corny, but I had this dream that I was happily married to Marina, and I woke up and had a hangover, which often makes you feel quite brave, and I sent her a message on Facebook, of all things, saying, ‘I had a dream that we were happily married, and I know I’m too old for you, but I really love you.’ She wrote back and said, ‘I’ve loved you since I was 18, and I’m so thrilled you feel the same way.’ So it’s a sort of romantic fairy story.” The pair married three years later in 2011 in a registry office in London, while the villa was under renovation.
Like most stately homes from another era, Cetinale remains in a constant state of renewal, with the property’s remote monastery, or romitorio, the latest building earmarked for development. “We’re going to restore it and put water and electricity, and make that into another four-bedroomed property that could be rented,” explains Marina of the hermitage, which sits atop an avenue of cypress trees and a steep flight of stone steps called the Scala Santa that’s well known to religious pilgrims, at the northern end of the estate. “The rooms are quite small because monks lived there,” adds Ned citing the period of 1715-1900, “but on the top floor there’s the most unbelievable view of the villa and the avenue.”
“There’s a pizza oven at the romitorio so we often have family nights up there, which is quite magical because everything is candle lit at the moment,” adds Marina.
And while painting workshops are another seasonal attraction, Marina is also busy relocating the Cetinale shop, currently housed in the office, to the nearby stables. In the spirit of other branded Italian hospitality hotspots such as Amalfi’s Le Sirenuse, she is building her own lifestyle offering, which includes the custom bath and body line Ortigia Villa Cetinale, olive oil from the estate, printed cotton table linens and children’s clothes, which are also available online.
Which brings us to the Lambton’s succession plan. “The aim is to keep it in the family,” confirms Ned. “My seven-year-old seems unusually bright, so perhaps he’ll make a lot of money and just take the thing over himself and not rent it out once he’s come here on his private jet,” he deadpans, flexing that British wit. “He’s very intelligent, and very good at chess. I’m sure he’ll take over the world … or preschool.” And at the very least Villa Cetinale.
Villa Cetinale: Memoir of a House in Tuscany (Rizzoli) is available now to preorder.
This story appears in the October issue of WISH Magazine, out now.
