Panoramic cascina above Alba

The villa stands in the hamlet of Madonna di Como, on the hill of Alba and 2.5 km from its centre, with an almost 360 degree panorama over the Nebbiolo and Barbera vineyards of the Langhe, a landscape protected by UNESCO. The house has belonged to the same family since their great-great-grandparents bought it: the sign reads A.D. 1890 and the building is certainly older. It holds four independent suites, each with its own entrance, alongside a shared living room and kitchen, a glass dining pavilion, and a terraced garden with a hot tub set at the edge of the slope.

The house is a family story before it is anything else. The cascina, El Purtinal in Piedmontese dialect, was bought by the owners' great-great-grandparents when it was already old and battered. The sign on the wall gives A.D. 1890, though the construction goes back further than that. What has changed is everything inside: four suites of contemporary design, restored with an eye for Italian craft, set into the old shell of the farmhouse.

The hamlet of Madonna di Como sits right on the hill of Alba, only 2.5 km from the centre of town. From that position the view opens almost all the way around, over the Nebbiolo and Barbera vineyards of the Langhe, a UNESCO protected landscape. Described today it sounds magnificent, and it is, but the grandparents remember the same isolation as a long uphill walk in the snow. It is why there is a well here at all, dug by hand into the tuff so that the house would have its own drinking water. It still works.

The symbol of the cascina, and the mark in its logo, is the laurel. It is thought to be more than two hundred years old, and it still does what it has always done, which is give the guests some shade in the height of summer. At the entrance stands a centuries-old fig tree, and the fig is the note the family chose for the bathroom amenities and the house fragrance, made for them by Laboratorio Olfattivo.

The four suites are independent in the fullest sense. Two of them, the Da Marisa Suite and the Franco Studio, open from the traditional balcony walkway and each has a four metre floor-to-ceiling window over the vineyards, the one at the end of the walkway known in the house as the Window to Infinity. All four have their own entrance, their own breakfast area or kitchenette, and walk-in Italian showers. Guests keep their own hours: breakfast when they want it, dinner cooked in the studio or eaten in Alba, a day of work at the desk with the hills in front of them.

Outside, a terraced garden steps down the slope to a hot tub and a run of sun loungers set against the whole sweep of the Langhe. There is an outdoor kitchen with a barbecue built into the old retaining wall, a lawn, and a glass dining pavilion under a chandelier where a long table looks straight out at the hills. In the evening the lights come on along the front of the house and the valley goes quiet.

Alba is two and a half kilometres away: the white truffle fair in autumn, the Saturday market, Ferrero, and a run of restaurants that would be remarkable in a city three times the size. Barbaresco is ten minutes, Barolo and La Morra a little further, and the cellars in between are the reason most people come. Turin is an hour, the Ligurian coast about two.