Relais dell'Ussero a Villa di Corliano

Beautiful location, monumental villa in the green. Small-scale. Quiet location between Pisa and Lucca. Both places visited by bike. The villa is enormously atmospheric. Price quality really okay.

We stayed one night in this magnificent place from another time! We also appreciated the welcome from the team and the possibility of dining at the restaurant on the same site!

From looking at the website, I was looking forward to my stay at the Villa di Corliano. I will start with the positive experiences: The grounds and garden are lovely during the day. The day groundskeeper, Gail, was friendly. The breakfast had healthy options and the cake was delicious. The onsite cat is adorable. That being said, the ownership might consider that the overall interior facilities and amount of staffing could be improved. As a business traveler, the accommodations were not at all ideal. #1: I had a late evening arrival and there was not a staff person to open the door or greet me. It was very uncomfortable and felt unsafe to arrive to a dark, unlit building. A work colleague who had arrived earlier had to let me in the building. #2: There is no indication on the website that there is no elevator access to the rooms on the 2nd floor or staff to help you with bags up very steep stairs (outside and inside). I have a knee injury so the stairs were challenging. Luckily, I had packed a day bag which I could bring upstairs, but had to leave my larger bag in the lobby in an unsecured area next to the door. #3 The room I was assigned, the Shelly Suite, while it has an appealing color scheme and high ceiling, had a very bad odor and needs a thorough replacement of the furniture, mattress and drapery. There is no closet, only an ancient wooden armoire that actually emitted a large cloud of dust when I opened the door to look for hangers. The window of the upper room was completely open and had no screen. I had to kill a very large insect that was on the wall. The shower had a very inexpensive and dated system that sprayed water all over the floor because there is only a small piece of glass pane to keep the water in. I took a video of the room, but Trip Advisor doesn't let you upload videos so I provided a screenshot of the open window and the In addition, the document highlighting the room's history on the wall alludes to medical experiments on cadavers in the basement. This gave me a very bad feeling about staying in that room and building. I barely slept. #4: I was never able to connect to the WiFi. If you are visiting for vacation, probably not a big deal. As a business traveler, this was really not great. I have an international data plan but I only had 3G access for phone and text during my stay at the Villa. OveralI, I suppose if you are a gothic horror film fan, this experience might be interesting, but it was extremely unsettling to me. It has a great deal of potential but at this time it feels like the ownership is hoping that the historical aspects and natural beauty of the estate will outshine the glaring basic updates and staffing that are sorely needed.