The Collegio alla Querce was once a boarding school. Now, it offers one of the most sumptuous hotel stays in Florence.
In the U.S., the Auberge Collection is known for managing some of the country’s best luxury hotels—several of which have made appearances in Travel + Leisure‘s World’s Best Awards and the It List. In Europe, though, the brand is still a relative newcomer, and after having stayed at several Auberge properties in America (including Maine’s White Barn Inn, The Vanderbilt in Newport, Rhode Island, and Mauna Lani in Hawaii) I arrived in Florence to see what their very first hotel in Italy was all about.
It is, after all, a big deal for both the city and the company—most of the high-end hotels in Florence are located in the dense city center. They usually occupy former palazzi (townhouses dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries) and have limited space for amenities. But what I found at Collegio alla Querce is wholly different from the rest of Florence’s hotel scene.
