Oasyhotel - 1,000 Hectares, 17 Lodges and a Pack of Wolves

Wolves in the woods, art by Kengo Kuma, and a lake you can actually swim in. Oasyhotel sits inside 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of protected Apennine wilderness in Tuscany - Italy's first WWF-affiliated nature reserve - and it is doing something uniquely different with the place.

Somewhere between Florence and Bologna, along a switchback road climbing into the Tuscan Apennines, a copper-smelting village turned into one of Italy's most unusual places to stay. Oasyhotel sits inside the Oasi Dynamo Nature Reserve - Italy's first WWF-affiliated nature reserve - and it arrived not by accident but through a remarkable century-long chain of reinvention.

Seventeen forest lodges, two restaurants and a private lake are the obvious draw. But behind that is a conservation program, a contemporary art trail, an organic farm and a research operation tracking wolves and rare bird species across 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of protected land. Whether you come for the deer or the Daniele Baccianti-cooked tagliatelle, you tend to leave having absorbed more than you expected.

Location

The reserve sits in the Pistoia Mountains, a stretch of the Apennines that forms the spine of Italy, and is roughly equidistant from Florence, Pisa and Bologna - each about an hour's drive away. That proximity to major cities is part of the pitch, but it also undersells how remote the place feels once you're inside. The road climbs, the trees thicken and the cell signal wobbles, and by the time you pull up to reception you've crossed a threshold of sorts.

The terrain ranges from dense beech forest to open meadows and a small artificial lake called San Vito. Wildlife here is not a brochure concept - wolves, deer and golden eagles are documented residents, and the reserve conducts monthly population counts to monitor them.

From Copper Mill to Conservation Blueprint

The area's history stretches back to the 1770s, when a new road - the Ximenian connecting Pistoia to Modena - brought infrastructure and opportunity to this mountain valley. Bartolomeo Cini, an entrepreneur with an eye for location, established kilns along the route. Those became a paper mill, then a textile factory, and by the late 1800s, the Turri family had turned the complex into a copper-processing plant employing 300 workers.

In 1899, the Societa Metallurgica Italiana (SMI) took over, and the industrial settlement of Limestre became a proper company town - workers' housing, a factory, a life built around metal production. That chapter closed in 1984 when the plant shut down, and the buildings sat until 2005, when a restoration project began to transform them into something completely different.

In 2007, Dynamo Camp opened on the site - a therapeutic recreation camp for children with serious illness, which remains central to the estate's identity. In 2016, the surrounding land was formalized as Oasi Dynamo, affiliated with WWF and dedicated to conservation. Oasyhotel followed in 2021, built within the reserve's fencing as an extension of the same philosophy: that the land can be used thoughtfully without being depleted by that use.

The model has four pillars - hospitality, education and research, agriculture and contemporary art - each of which operates as a functional program rather than marketing language. University students carry out conservation research here. The farm produces organic cheese and yogurt that ends up on your plate. The art trail now spans ten permanent installations.

Dining: Tuscan Tradition, Taken Seriously

The main restaurant is set in a former farmhouse directly across from reception, and it handles both breakfast and dinner. In summer, breakfast on the terrace is the obvious choice - the building is attractive but the views and morning air are better outside.

The menu leans into Tuscan seasonal produce: artichokes, tomatoes, white beans, game and cod in rotation, with cheese from the estate's own dairy and bread baked in-house daily. Chef Daniele Baccianti, Florentine and characteristically unfussy about it, brings the kind of cooking that respects ingredients by not overcrowding them.

The bistrot, housed in the main reception building, is the lower-key option for midday eating and pre-dinner drinks. The menu skews toward hearty, farm-to-table dishes that won't slow you down for an afternoon hike.

A short walk, e-bike ride or buggy transfer down the mountain brings you to Casa Luigi, a renovated farmhouse set amid the reserve's open pastures. The format here is small plates and snacks rather than a formal menu - panzanella with ripe tomatoes, fresh pasta with ricotta and basil - in a setting that is explicitly relaxed. It's a trattoria in tone, and the location, lower in the valley with the fields stretching out around it, is lovely.

The central bar, in the main hub building, functions as the social gathering point of the estate. Local wines, craft beers and cocktails; comfortable seating; the kind of place where you end up staying longer than you meant to.

Down at San Vito Lake, the Kiosk handles the lakeside crowd - snacks, drinks and the occasional picnic setup. It's an outdoor, casual operation that makes a lot of sense in summer when you've spent the morning in the water and don't want to walk back up to the main buildings for lunch.

Lodges Built to Disappear into the Landscape

Oasyhotel has 17 lodges in total, scattered across meadows and woodland within the reserve's fencing. All were designed using sustainable materials - oak and birch primarily - in a contemporary Scandinavian idiom that reads as quietly confident rather than aggressively designed.

Large windows and private verandas are common to all lodge types, and each comes with an e-bike for getting around the reserve. The main hub is walkable from every lodge, though the e-bikes make the return journey after dinner considerably more appealing.

The Double Lodge is the standard unit, and at 64 square meters (689 sq ft) inside it's spacious without being extravagant. An Italian king bed, living area with a sofa bed, bar corner with Nespresso, and a veranda with two Adirondack-style chairs. The veranda is where you'll spend a disproportionate amount of your time - it's positioned for views into the woodland, and the chairs are deliberately built for long sitting.

The design is uncluttered and the materials are warm, which is a better combination than the reverse. There are 14 of these lodges across the estate.

Functionally similar to the Double Lodge at the same 64 square meters (689 sq ft), the Twin Lodge reconfigures the sleeping arrangement into two bunk-bed rooms - four single beds in total - making it the obvious choice for families with children or groups of friends who want their own space but not separate accommodations.

The living area, veranda and bar corner are identical to the Double Lodge. Two of these exist on the estate, which keeps them from feeling like the budget option even though they serve a different function.

The newest addition to the collection sits outside the main fenced area - technically in the wild - and is notably different in character. Built within a restored estate building, the Loft in the Forest is 55 square meters (592 sq ft) of single accommodation designed explicitly for two people who want to be further in.

The woodland views through large windows are more immediate here, the elevated terrace is positioned above ground for wildlife observation (or aperitivo, depending on your priorities), and there is a button in the room that cuts all digital connections entirely.

The Lake

San Vito Lake is artificial - the result of a damned stream - but you wouldn't guess it from the atmosphere. The surface reflects the cherry trees along its banks, dragonflies skim the shallows and the surrounding landscape is wild. In summer, the lake develops a proper lido scene: sun loungers, the Kiosk for refreshments and access to the floating bio-swimming pool.

That pool is built on a wooden floating structure that channels lake water through a natural filtration and sanitation system, producing something that feels considerably more like swimming in nature than a conventional pool while remaining regularly monitored.

There is a grass tennis court set in a small valley that slopes toward the lake. It's available to all in-house guests at no additional charge, and the reserve's team can arrange instruction if needed.

Art in Nature: The OCA Trail

Oasy Contemporary Art (OCA) is the reserve's permanent art program, and by 2026 it will comprise ten site-specific installations spread along a 1.5 kilometer (nearly 1 mile) route through the reserve. The program has a clear guiding principle: art should adapt to the landscape, not the other way around.

The indoor gallery hosts rotating exhibitions of art and photography, which provides a counterpoint to the permanent outdoor trail.

The roster of artists is serious. Kengo Kuma and Michele De Lucchi have contributed architectural works; David Svensson has permanent installations in the collection. For 2026, Stefano Boeri presents a white marble bench embedded within the forest canopy - a piece that rewards sitting still in it as much as looking at it.

Belgian artist Arne Quinze contributes both indoor work in the reserve's converted former cattle barn gallery and an outdoor installation titled Ceramorphia, consisting of five clay sculptures situated in the landscape.

Activities

The reserve has been recognized among the most beautiful skies in Italy - a function of its elevation, distance from urban light pollution and the clarity of Apennine air. Oasyhotel offers two formats for experiencing this.

The first is a standard guided stargazing session with a digital telescope, during which you can photograph the moon and visible planets directly through the eyepiece with a smartphone.

The second - Into the Night - is a guided walk through the forest after dark, using flashlights and thermal cameras. The thermal cameras are the genuinely unusual element here; seeing the nocturnal landscape through them changes how you understand the place.

There is also an Astrotour option involving a professional telescope and expert guidance, with the option to photograph celestial objects - moon and planets - using a smartphone through the telescope lens.

San Vito Lake is calm, clean and well-suited to both kayaking and stand-up paddle boarding. The surrounding landscape is as wild as anywhere on the reserve, and approaching it from the water gives a perspective that the trails don't offer.

Equipment is available to in-house guests, and both activities are accessible to beginners. The water is calm enough that you don't need prior experience to be comfortable.

The reserve's guided wildlife tours cover the full 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) on foot, with expert guides who have been tracking the reserve's animal populations for years. The approach is explicitly low-impact: silent observation, deep listening and no disturbance of habitat.

Guides supplement live sightings with footage from strategically placed camera traps, which document wolf behavior, deer movement and bird activity across the reserve in ways that a single walk cannot. The wolves are present - the reserve supports Apennine wolf populations and conducts ongoing research including university internships focused on their conservation - though sightings during tours depend on luck and conditions. Deer are more reliably spotted.

Beyond these three, the reserve offers foraging walks, bushcraft sessions, orienteering, cooking classes in the old farmhouse, horseback riding for experienced riders, beekeeping visits from May to September, cheesemaking at the farm and guided bike tours through the beech forest and up to panoramic viewpoints over the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines.