Contemporary Masterwork. Tuscany.

A Contemporary Masterwork is a villa that opted to be modern. Either a new build by a working architectural studio. Massimo Adario, Studio Pa, the better-known northern practices that have built here, or a contemporary restoration where the studio chose to leave the medieval bones legible but answer them in steel, glass, polished concrete and pale wood.

The category exists because the cliché of Tuscany, terracotta floors, dark beams, sgraffito on every wall, is the Tuscany of a hundred and fifty years of country-house tradition, and it is not the whole story. The houses in this category are the other Tuscany: spare, large, considered, with internal logic informed by Scandinavian and Japanese practice as much as by anything Italian.

These villas are the smallest category by count but disproportionately important by enquiry, we hear regularly from architecture-aware guests who have looked at the rest of the collection and want to know what else exists. They sleep eight to sixteen, almost always with an open primary living space rather than a series of saloni.

Best for travellers whose other holiday choices already include design hotels and named-architect rentals.

Tell us the dates, the size of your party and whether the category fits. If we have a house that holds up, we will say so directly; if we do not, we will tell you that too. Replies come from the founders, usually within a working day.