Looking Around

Inside Florence's Former Boarding School, Now a Hotel

For more than a century, Collegio alla Querce was one of Florence's most storied centers of learning — a 16th-century property on a hillside overlooking the Duomo, through whose marble-lined hallways generations of scholars once passed. Today, realizing the vision of owner Analjit Singh, it has been reborn as the first Italian property in the Auberge Collection: an 83-room hotel where the building's original character has been carefully preserved rather than erased, and where high Renaissance references meet contemporary Italian design across guest rooms, restored gardens, and a series of remarkable repurposed spaces.

Collegio alla Querce opened in 2025 as the first Italian property in the Auberge Collection, occupying a 16th-century building on a hillside just north of Florence's historic center, with sweeping views of the Duomo and the Tuscan hills beyond. For more than a hundred years the property functioned as a school, and the design approach — led by the Spanish father-son architecture firm Esteva i Esteva, with interiors by Florentine studio ArchFlorence — treated that history as an asset to be preserved rather than a problem to be solved. As Auberge's chief creative officer has put it, the team restored rather than renovated the property, celebrating its three-century evolution from villa to school to hotel.

That philosophy is most visible in the way the hotel's public spaces reuse their original functions. The restored chapel, La Cappella, and the original theater, Il Teatro — complete with its opulent stage and wraparound balcony — have been preserved as event and dining venues, while the signature Bar Bertelli occupies the former principal's office, where portraits of the school's top students still look down from the walls. Elsewhere, historic spaces have been given new life without losing their identity: one of the garden restaurants occupies what was once the student cafeteria. It is a rare example of adaptive reuse that reads as genuine continuity rather than theme.

The 83 guest rooms and suites, including the showstopping Quercia Suite, combine the building's original architectural features — hand-painted frescoes, coffered wood ceilings, marble detailing — with contemporary Italian furnishings, hand-selected antiques, and locally sourced materials. Woolen fabrics nod to Florence's tradition of fine tailoring, inlaid hardwood floors warm the neutral palette, and tall windows frame views of the gardens and the terracotta city below. Each room follows a unique layout dictated by the original structure, so that no two spaces feel quite alike.

Outdoors, four levels of historic terraced gardens — designed by landscape architect Franchesca Watson and restored to a distinctly Medici-esque grandeur — cascade down the hillside toward an oak-fringed swimming pool, bar, and restaurant. The effect is the one the design team set out to achieve: the relaxed feel of a Tuscan country estate combined with the energy of Florence, all within a single property. For a building that has spent three centuries reinventing itself, it is a fitting next chapter — and a compelling model for how historic architecture can be brought into contemporary hospitality without being flattened in the process.

Collegio alla Querce
Via delle Forbici, 21B,
50133 Firenze FI

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