You don’t have to be a rock star to vacation like one, at least as long as you have pockets as deep as a veteran singer-songwriter like Sting who makes Il Palagio, his nearly 900-acre estate in Italy’s spectacularly scenic Tuscany region, available as a sumptuous, short-term rental.
The main villa, a photogenic three-story structure above the picturesque town of Figline Valdarno, dates to the 16th century and was painstakingly restored and updated by the former Police front man and his actress-producer wife Trudie Styler. The main villa offers intricately detailed and luxurious entertainment spaces that include baronial living and dining rooms, the latter with a frescoed ceiling. There’s also a music room, a complete recording studio, and a wine cellar stocked with Italian wines. The main villa will accommodate 18 in nine en suite bedrooms — a 10th bedroom is reserved for exclusive use by Sting and Styler — and five guest houses can host another 30 guests. The estate’s postcard-worthy grounds provide guests with manicured and terraced gardens, a swimming pool, a tennis court, equestrian facilities, and an oversized outdoor chessboard along with a private lake and organic vineyards and olive groves.
Il Palagio’s main villa is never available during the month of August, presumably when Sting and Styler are in residence. Rental rates are not publicly available; however, one of the estate’s marketing websites states, “Il Palagio is one of the most exclusive and luxurious villas in all of Italy” and, hence, “priced accordingly.”
Sting and Styler preside over a portfolio of lavish residences that include a late-16th century Elizabethan manor house on 800 acres near Andover, about two hours outside of London, where the couple maintains a home in the posh Highgate area. Stateside, the couple keeps a 5,400-square-foot duplex apartment in New York City as well as an oceanfront home in Malibu bought from late actor Larry Hagman that’s they also have available as a short-term furnished rental at a nose-bleedy $200,000 per month.
listing photos: Tuscan Dream
