Rent at your peril!!

My wife and I were compelled to bring this website into being after recently renting this tower in San Gimignano but were not able to find anywhere to leave a review of our experience anywhere on the internet.


We have been to Tuscany many times over the last 9 years so have a good idea of the quality of accommodation on offer and its relative price. We have seen most parts of the region and have stayed both in towns (including San Gimignano) and rural locations. In fact, it’s safe to say we’re Italophiles, and are particularly fond of Tuscany.

So please read our short review/story and look at our pictures below. We feel that the information on the agent's website is very misleading and we want to prevent other people from falling into the same costly trap as we did.

The story

We booked the tower (Torre Salvucci) for a week in June 2012.

We have been to San Gimignano many times before and we knew that the Torre Salvucci was available for holiday rental, so when it came to finding somewhere for our honeymoon we naturally decided to look it up.

After a bit of searching we found it on Posarellivillas.com, and after looking at the favourable reviews and the handful of photos, we decided to book it, deeming the roof terrace worth the steep price of rental. It really seemed like a very special place to be for a week and was described on the agent's website as a 'luxury villa'.

We checked in on the Saturday evening. On walking into the property we were told to leave our luggage outside the tower in a sort of communal area at the top of the first flight of stairs (there are 180 steps to deal with in this tower). We thought this a bit odd, but didn’t question it. We were then taken up another flight of stairs to the entrance to the tower and then another flight to the first usable floor - a compact but functional kitchen & dining room - by far the biggest space in the tower (and the only real living space) but certainly only just big enough for two.

We were then taken up the rest of the floors (most of which are pointless and unusable - e.g. just a writing desk, just a glass table and small, hard chairs, etc.) in quick succession to get to what is the real draw for this place: the roof terrace. As you’d expect, the views were amazing!

We waved goodbye to the owners and decided to (try to) unpack and make ourselves comfortable - and so started the difficulties.

No room for luggage

Our clothing could not be unpacked, as the only place large enough to leave our cases was back in the small (lockable) room off the communal corridor outside the main apartment - the steel steps were just too narrow and difficult to ascend with any luggage, and there was no space big enough to leave cases inside the tower in any case This therefore meant a walk down approximately six flights of stairs each morning (and leaving the apartment) just to get fresh clothes!

Having spent nearly three hours just getting our luggage from the car to the tower (cars are not allowed in the centre of the town without a permit - the owner [who has a permit] helped us with some of our bags in her car but left us to our own devices with the rest of our stuff) and attempting to unpack and move things up and down the narrow, shallow steps, we were quite tired so decided dinner was in order.

Treacherous stairs

At this point I must say that we were always expecting a lot of steps and were quite prepared for such. We both exercise regularly and are only in our thirties, so we are far from unfit, but what we weren’t prepared for was how narrow, shallow and difficult the steps were to use. Carrying anything at all up and down them was treacherous - especially as there wasn’t always a handrail to hold on to. My wife grazed her elbow on the wall attempting to steady herself and we felt as if we would be lucky to get to the end of the week without breaking our necks!

No water

When we eventually sat down to have some dinner we found we had no water (at all). We called the owners who came round about an hour later. Between them they eventually got the water working again and we were shown how to reset the pump should the problem arise again. We were also told not to use any more than one water outlet at a time due to the lack of water pressure going up the tower (which is understandable, but hardly luxury when you can barely get enough water out the tap to wash your hands while the toilet is still filling).

After this we decided to call it a night and get some sleep hoping the next day would bring some renewed enthusiasm for the place.

Bed barely larger than a single

We had a terrible night's sleep in what is sold as a French bed - basically this is a large single bed jammed in between a wall and a stair bannister. You couldn't even fit two pillows next to each other without overlapping by a half. At this point we were losing hope for the week ahead. We understand that the tower is unique (it’s why we rented it), but if this is the only bed that can be fitted in, then maybe it should not be slept in by any more than one person. To make matters worse, the layout of the floors was such that there were two flights of the narrow twisty steps between the bedroom and the bathroom - so any night-time trips to the bathroom entailed either going up or down two flights of those difficult steps!

No hot water

The final straw for us was when we attempted to shower the next morning and each found that the water was only hot for about two minutes and then went cold again. We even went and had a look in the boiler room to check that things were working OK (the boiler seemed to be firing up correctly) but the same thing happened again. Having been told on Saturday evening (after the first issue with the plumbing) that we would not see a plumber until Monday at the earliest, we decided we’d had enough, and didn’t want to spend any more of our precious week feeling miserable in the tower. We spent the rest of the day, re-packing and finding alternative accommodation (at considerable extra expense!).

Uninhabitable - barely a step up from camping

We feel that as an apartment the tower is wholly unsuitable and virtually uninhabitable. The steps are so difficult to use it’s almost impossible to carry anything up and down them, making the roof terrace (the big attraction of the property) almost useless. The fact that your luggage is so far away from where you sleep (even if you wanted to take suitcases upstairs you couldn’t as there isn’t a room big enough to put them in), and that it would be hard to get a good night's sleep in a bed so narrow, means that we have little nice left to say about this so-called ‘luxury’ apartment (my wife felt that it was barely a step up from camping).

Sleeps 4??!!!

In addition to the French bed there were two bunk beds - and the tower is advertised as 'sleeps 4'. However, it is also advertised as unsuitable for children (quite rightly - the idea of having children in the mix would be horrifying and almost certain to lead to a trip(s) to A&E!). So quite how it 'sleeps 4' is mystifying - even if any adults decided it was ok to sleep in bunk beds, the idea of four people being in the incredibly tiny space that the tower offers is enough to make us shudder.

Misleading

Yes, the tower has been very tastefully refurbished; yes, it’s in a fabulous location; and yes, the views from the roof are amazing - but sadly it is pretty much impossible to live in (and certainly very uncomfortable). We find it quite astounding that it can be advertised as 'luxury' accommodation and feel that the description is very misleading.

We lodged a complaint with Posarelli Villas about our experience in the tower, emphasising the fact that we had booked it as 'luxury' accommodation for our honeymoon and that we were really disappointed with the way our special week had started. We were told by them that we should have waited for the plumber to arrive to fix the water (so that would have meant three days of our honeymoon spent without hot running water - not our idea of luxury!) and that they 'did not accept' our complaint about their description ('luxury') being misleading. They pointed to the (few) decent testimonials on their own website. We did, however, note that unlike most accommodation in an area as busy and popular as Tuscany, the tower barely had any bookings other than ours for the whole of the summer - that speaks volumes.

Please take a look at the pictures below to see what we mean about the bed and the stairs!