Villa Passigli in Ronchi: a new life for Maurizio Tempestini’s house

Every house has a story. But not every house is fortunate enough to meet new owners who want to continue it while preserving what matters most.

For Villa Passigli, that moment arrived in 2023. The sale of the villa was handled by Sergey Bashkyrtsev, real estate agent and representative of Real Estate Advisor. Today we are watching the house gradually return to life through the careful restoration undertaken by its new owners.

This story has a special meaning for us. It tells of architecture meeting people able to appreciate it more deeply than through floor area, location or price.

Villa Passigli was fortunate in its new owners. That is where we want to begin its new chapter.

A house made for life among the pines

Villa Passigli was designed by Maurizio Tempestini with Aterino Aterini in 1959 and completed in 1960. It was commissioned by the Florentine Passigli family, publishers and musicians who imagined a summer house in the greenery of Ronchi. The villa is now included in Italy’s national census of significant architecture built since 1945.

The architecture unfolds through its relationship with the garden. Several connected volumes form four wings facing different directions. The living room opens to the greenery through a large glazed wall, while the timber ceiling continues outside to form the portico roof on distinctive forked supports. The stone fireplace extends from the interior to the outside of the house, reinforcing this continuity.

The boundary between house and garden becomes almost nominal. From the living room the eye travels freely to the trees; beneath the portico, one is already outdoors while still feeling the shelter of an interior.

Stone gives the composition solidity, timber warmth and glazing lightness. There is no need for demonstrative luxury: the impression comes from proportion, material and light.

It is precisely this balance that deserves to be preserved.

Maurizio Tempestini and the art of the holiday home

Ronchi was familiar territory for Tempestini. In 1955 he had already built his own house here, also in collaboration with Aterino Aterini. A few years later they worked together again on Villa Passigli.

The connection between architecture, holiday life and landscape also appears in his other projects. In 1947–1948 Tempestini worked with Nello Baroni and Pietro Porcinai on the Ristorante Dancing La Bussola at Le Focette. There too, gardens, open spaces and covered routes formed a single composition linking the building with the coastal landscape.

At Villa Passigli this approach becomes intimate and domestic. It expresses a particular idea of summer living: more time outdoors, long hours in the shade, an open view of the garden and closeness to nature without giving up domestic comfort.

Decades later, this idea of a home remains both clear and appealing.

Ronchi and Poveromo: a coast of writers, artists and architects

The history of Villa Passigli cannot be separated from that of its surroundings.

Ronchi and Poveromo have their own cultural biography. Interest in these places began long before the villa was built: in 1932, writer Anna Banti and art historian Roberto Longhi acquired Villa Turchina in Poveromo. The natural setting and seclusion of the coast attracted people for whom a summer house was simultaneously a place of rest, work and conversation.

In the post-war decades, especially the 1950s and 1960s, this environment developed further. Author-designed residences appeared, while the Nuova Pergola, opened in 1958, became a meeting place for writers, artists and intellectuals. Its visitors included Eugenio Montale, Alberto Moravia, Dacia Maraini, Carlo Carrà and Renato Guttuso. Ronchi is also home to Aldo Rossi’s first completed work.

It was a distinctive culture of summer life: villas among pines, private gardens, conversations about art and literature, and architecture created for particular people and their way of living.

To see Ronchi and Poveromo only as neighbouring districts of Forte dei Marmi is therefore to miss what is most interesting. These places have a character of their own: more private, greener and connected to a tradition of life on large plots.

Villa Passigli was born in precisely this environment.

The family who recognised the value of the house

The villa’s new owners are a family from Eastern Europe, people of refined taste, broad cultural interests and a sincere appreciation of beauty.

During our work together, their relationship with the house was especially memorable. They recognised value in its existing architecture: the proportions, materials, unusual composition and connection with the pine garden. What another buyer might have seen as a reason for radical alteration became, for them, its principal quality.

After the purchase, the owners invested substantial resources in the recovery and restoration of Villa Passigli. Their aim is to return beauty and quality of life to the house while preserving its recognisable character.

For author-designed architecture, this approach matters deeply. A house can be updated in many ways, but not every update preserves the reason it deserves attention. Sometimes the most responsible work is to understand the existing solution and treat it with care.

When we say that Villa Passigli has been fortunate, we mean very concrete things: its new owners’ willingness to invest time, resources and attention in preserving the house.

The restoration continues. Photographs of the renewed pool area already show part of the change, while archival images reveal where that journey began.

Gradually, the house is becoming a place for living again, with respect for the past and a perspective extending many years into the future.

More than 5,000 m² of garden: why the owners chose this location

The choice of Ronchi was deliberate. The new owners were drawn by the possibility of living close to the sea while having a genuinely large plot.

Villa Passigli is surrounded by a garden of more than 5,000 m² with mature pines. Neighbouring properties also occupy generous grounds. The feeling of space therefore does not end at the boundary: the surrounding development retains a calm, open rhythm.

This setting supports privacy. Generous distances remain between houses, trees form natural green boundaries and the garden becomes a complete part of everyday life.

From our experience on the coast, it is increasingly difficult in Forte dei Marmi to combine proximity to the sea, a large park and meaningful distance from neighbours. Ronchi and Poveromo offer another scenario: staying close to the familiar life of the coast while returning home to a more private setting.

For Villa Passigli’s owners, this combination was one of the decisive reasons.

The large garden is not an additional property feature. It defines the very way of living in the house. Mature pines and an established landscape possess a value that cannot be recreated in a single building season.

Villa Alpebella and renewed international attention

One visible example of new life being given to historic properties on this stretch of coast is Villa Alpebella, owned by Andrea Bocelli’s family.

The family acquired the former Oliviero complex in 2002 and named it Alpebella. The restoration brought renewed attention to a place already connected with a celebrated venue on the Tuscan Riviera during the 1960s and 1970s.

Today Villa Alpebella hosts international charity events. It is the venue for the Celebrity Adventures Italy — Notti Toscane gala, bringing together music and support for humanitarian projects, including Andrea Bocelli Foundation programmes. The 2026 edition welcomed Orlando Bloom, Fran Drescher, Gregory Porter and other international guests.

There is a symbolic connection between eras here. The coast once chosen by writers, artists and musicians is again becoming a place for international encounters.

For us, the revival of the area is expressed above all through this attention to existing heritage: historic houses are restored, gardens preserved and long-established places given a new life.

Villa Passigli is a more private, family-scale example of the same attitude.

The property market: the value of rare combinations

Asking prices in Ronchi–Poveromo also show growth. According to Immobiliare.it, in August 2026 the average asking price for residential property in the area was approximately 5.9% higher than a year earlier. This is a measure of listing prices across all property types, not completed sale prices or valuations of individual historic villas.

For a buyer of an architect-designed residence, averages are only a general reference. The specific combination matters much more: architecture, condition, the size and quality of the garden, proximity to the sea and surroundings.

In our work, properties combining all these qualities make up the most limited part of the supply. A large plot does not by itself make a house special. But when expressive architecture and the right setting are added, a very different kind of value emerges.

Some of these homes are sold confidentially, without appearing on public portals. Real Estate Advisor has off-market opportunities in Ronchi and Poveromo for buyers who value an individual search and access to property outside public advertising.

We consider these houses together with their history and their possibilities for future life, not simply as a list of features.

Selling a house means passing on its story

For Real Estate Advisor, the work with Villa Passigli became a story that continued after the transaction was completed.

We knew the house before the sale. We accompanied its transfer to the new owners. Now we can see how much attention they are giving to its restoration.

This continuity is what allows us to understand the result of our work. A contract records a change of ownership, but the future of a house depends on the people who receive the keys.

Villa Passigli has retained its name, architecture and relationship with the garden. It now also has a family prepared to care for that legacy.

Sometimes the best result of a sale is finding people for a special house who can continue its story without erasing the earlier chapters.

Finding a home with a story of its own

The Villa Passigli and Villa Alpebella photographs were supplied to Real Estate Advisor. Descriptive alternative text, captions, original dimensions and structured ImageObject data have been added for accessibility and image indexing.