In Boccaccio’s Decameron, the masterpiece of medieval Italian literature written in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, a group of seven young women and three young men escape the apocalyptic horror of a plague-ridden Florence for the hills of Fiesole, some three miles to the north. There, they set up shop in a series of spectacular villas for a two-week quarantine and tell each other 100 playful (and often bawdy) tales to pass the time, taking breaks to wander through the bucolic meadows and fragrant walled gardens of the estate in which they find themselves.

The Florence of today may not look exactly like it did during the darkest days of the bubonic plague—there are no bodies piled in the streets as far as I’ve seen, nor preachers howling about the end times. But if you find yourself there in the middle of the city’s summer peak season, with its baking temperatures and human traffic jams, it is its own kind of hell.

So, I was reminded of The Decameron (or more likely, the Cliff’s Notes summary I probably read as a student) when travelling from the chaos of Santa Maria Novella station to Fiesole a few weeks back. Heading out from the scrum of the city center and into the peaceful winding streets leading up to the hilltop town, I could practically feel my heart rate slow with every turn.

My heart pretty much stopped entirely, however, when I pulled into the driveway of my destination, Villa San Michele, a Belmond Hotel, which is housed in the kind of Renaissance villa dreams are made of. So it comes as little surprise to learn that its delicately proportioned facade is believed to have been originally designed by Michelangelo himself. Before that, it was the site of a humble 15th-century monastery, and you can understand why the monks set up shop here—despite being just a 20-minute car ride from central Florence, the only sounds when I breezed through the loggia to check in were the rustling leaves of the olive trees lining the driveway and the trilling of sparrows and nightingales in the nearby forest. (That forest, by the way? It’s where Leonardo da Vinci came to study local birds of prey and eventually tested his “great kite” flying machine.) It’s about as idyllic a classic Tuscan setting as you could possibly imagine.

Yet while Villa San Michele has long been a particularly beloved jewel in Belmond’s glittering crown of Italian hotels—some of the other legendary la dolce vita properties in their portfolio include the Splendido in Portofino and the Cipriani in Venice—it was also, they decided a few years ago, in need of a little TLC. So they shut the property down entirely for 18 months and launched into a top-to-toe refurb, whittling it back to its 16th-century bones to restore it to its original glories, then building it back up with a few design twists. (To do so, Belmond worked with the locally based Luigi Fragola Architects, whose immaculate taste and sensitivity to the storied history of the building are visible in every corner.)

To wit, your first experience of the property post-refurb—well, at least after a medieval bell is rung to signal your arrival, as if you’re a pilgrim stopping by the monastery back in the day—involves stepping into one of its former chapels, where you’ll be offered a glass of Champagne or a freshly squeezed aranciata while handing over your passport to one of the impeccably dressed staff behind the antique freestanding reception desk. To reach your room, you’ll be guided through a series of sunlight-drenched cloisters, now protected from the elements by elegant glass roofs, one with an enormous Japanese maple in the center and winding trails of ivy climbing up the pillars that lend it a suitably fairytale feel.

And while many of the hotel’s 39 suites are spread across the terraced gardens, I found myself happily ensconced in the historic main building. More specifically, in a series of former monks’ quarters that had been thoughtfully reimagined to retain the original features—an imposing black marble fireplace, wooden slats on the ceilings, Tuscan terracotta flooring—with contemporary accents, such as a headboard upholstered in a botanical jacquard, mid-century wall lamps, and an enormous jewel-toned woven rug, featuring a striking pattern riffing on Renaissance scrollwork.

The real showstopper, however, was the bathroom: an interconnected series of rooms decked out in deep green, richly veined Cipollino marble from Carrara, with a rolltop bathtub for the ages that I immediately hopped into for a long, jasmine-scented soak. I don’t know every detail of this building’s history, but I think I can say with some confidence that this isn’t how the monks here used to live.

Neither, I imagine, did they have the option of indulging in my next port of call: the Guerlain spa, reached via a rabbit warren of staircases and corridors in the upper reaches of the main building. There, I was laid out on a wide, absurdly cozy massage table, swaddled within a plush comforter and gently heated, and had my face primped and slathered with all sorts of cool, viscous lotions and potions—most notably, the Abeille Royale honey nectar lotion, whose star ingredient of royal jelly is harvested from beehives off the coast of Brittany—until I came out glowing like a Renaissance cherub. (Or as close to that as I was ever going to get, anyway.)

Wellness, it turns out, is a key tenet of the newly revamped hotel’s overall philosophy: one of its flagship offerings is a series of “energy-raising” healing and mindfulness sessions and workshops, which are largely hosted throughout the gardens, and have been devised by JJ Martin of La DoubleJ.

Though if you really want the full experience, make a beeline for the so-called Raise Your Vibration Station. Located up a winding set of stairs that snake their way through the forest—if it doesn’t raise your vibrations, it’ll certainly raise your heart rate—a bijou former 16th-century chapel has been reimagined as a miniature temple of zen with quartz crystal singing bowls for sacred sound healing sessions. Admittedly, however, I was a little fatigued by my journey, so I instead spent an afternoon by the pool reading my book rather than joining a yoga session. We all get to choose our own definitions of self-care, right?

I’d need the rest, it turned out. I happened to be at Villa San Michele on its opening weekend, for which a glittering lineup of design tastemakers—Alexa Chung, Athena Calderone, and Martin herself among them—had descended on Fiesole to toast to the property’s renaissance. The festivities began with a welcome party where cocktails infused with Santa Maria Novella rose elixir (complete with the flowers suspended in ice cubes) were served on silver platters, and bounteous platters of prosciutto and parmigiano lay next to lumaconi pasta churned around an enormous cheese wheel to make a piquant cacio e pepe, then passed around in miniature Ginori bowls.

And the following evening, the open-air loggia that directly overlooks the city—under normal circumstances, the location of the hotel’s fine-dining Antesi restaurant—had been set up with one long, candlelit table for an extravagant dinner of amberjack panzanella and sea bass with mussels and clams. There, the weekend’s guest of honor emerged: none other than the grande dame of wellness herself, Gwyneth Paltrow, who sat chatting with Belmond’s CEO Dan Ruff in an Altuzarra gown; she’d spent part of her day enjoying a gong bath session at the chapel in the forest, naturally. If I’m being honest, though, the real highlight of the evening happened when we headed into a cavernous room lit entirely by candlelight, where a fresco of the Last Supper could be glimpsed through the flickering light on one wall, and a heaving antique table had been laid with an eye-popping array of desserts from towers of cannoli and sfogliatelle and rum babas—even the most grandiose of the Medicis would surely have been impressed. (The festivities continued as DJ Isabella Massenet spun disco classics until the very early hours of the morning.)

Though the part of the weekend which captured the spirit of Villa San Michele 2.0 better than any, in my humble opinion, was a morning spent exploring the gardens of various villas around Fiesole—most of which are not open to the general public and have been opened up to guests thanks to the tireless pursuits of the hotel’s concierge. A fleet of electric three-wheeled Piaggio Apes pulled up onto the driveway to whizz us down the hairpin bends to the Villa Medici, today the private home of an Italian family, whose terraced gardens set the blueprint for centuries of horticultural design. Next, it was onto the Villa Gamberaia, for sweeping views of the city beyond its parterre gardens and grottoes. I’m lucky enough to have spent many months of my life exploring every nook and cranny of Florence—in a past life, I worked for a few years as an art history guide around Italy, spending weeks at a time exploring the cities and Renaissance and Etruscan treasures—but these were places I’d never had the chance to visit; in fact, that I’d never even really heard about.

Because, of course, if you’re visiting Florence for the very first time, and really want to spend your time immersed in the city center, Villa San Michele may not be the right option for you. (Though if you choose to do so during the tourist-choked peak summer months, don’t say I didn’t warn you.) But if you have been before and want to discover a different side of the place, there really is nowhere better. Up here in the hills, you can watch the pristine light of the Tuscan sun hit the marbled ribs of Brunelleschi’s dome in the morning, or watch the city’s turrets fade into a sfumato haze straight out of a da Vinci painting. If you want to venture into the city, you can be there in 20 minutes flat. But if you want to live like a real Florentine might have done back in the day—just like those noble men and women of The Decameron who escaped up here during the plague—then it’s utter paradise. Even if you don’t choose to participate in a sound healing or gong session, you really will feel your energies raised.