Seven days in the green heart of Italy, with time to make art.
Small groups ~ the villa has but 8 romantic suites. Beginners & experienced artists welcome. For those who want to explore something new. And for those who simply love Italy.
Worried you're not creative? You will be here. Italy insists.
Book your call Free · 45 minutes · 12 of the 56 places for 2027 are already takenCynthia Morgan has lived in Umbria for over twenty years and raised her three children here. Each week, fourteen guests and a working artist share an 18th-century villa below Panicale.
You've said "I'm not really an artist" out loud. Who's to say?
Maybe you drew as a girl and the sketchbook stopped somewhere between work and children. There's a drawer of supplies you bought and never opened. You follow printmakers online and tell yourself you could never make what they make. Or you've never once called yourself creative, and lately, quietly, you want to find out.
You've been to Italy, or you've promised yourself you'll go, and either way the art was behind a rope with a queue in front of it. This time you don't want to look at it. You want to be the one making it: ink on your hands, hours at a long table, nobody grading you, in the company of women who are starting from zero too.
Where non-artists discover the creative within. And where artists, stuck in their journeys, reignite their passions.
Nobody here will ask what you do for a living. They'll ask what you made today. If that's the week you've been missing, keep reading.
It's not your usual "restored Italian villa." Nor is it a hotel. It's a home.
Cynthia, on the villaAn awakening of the senses, and of you.
There's a moment in printmaking when you peel the paper back and see what you made for the first time. The room goes quiet, and then it doesn't. The week is built around that moment, and around everything that makes it possible: your hands, the light, the hilltop towns, one long table, and a dozen people who watched you make it. None of it feels like work, and all of it is quietly building your confidence and the joy new friendships bring.
What you'll feel by Wednesday
- You pull a print and, for once, don't say "it's not very good"
- Hours pass at the studio table and you don't check the time once
- You say "my work" about something you made, and mean it
- You eat slowly, you taste things, you laugh at the table until late
- You walk up to the village at sunset with ink still on your fingers
- Nobody needs you for a week, and it feels like permission
What you'll leave with
- An edition of prints, pages or plates with your name on them, made with your own hands
- A technique you can keep at your kitchen table. Guests go home, buy a gelli plate, and sign up for the class they'd put off for years
- A confidence guests describe as "bolder": to try new things, to say yes faster
- Friends in Umbria who feel like yours, Cynthia, Emma, Mathew and Nigel included
- A reset to what Cynthia calls your factory settings: joy, hope and excitement
- A reason to come back, which half of one week already has
A nobleman's summer house, restored as a home.
The villa below Panicale was the summer residence of a Perugian nobleman. Its owner, Emma, restored it as a family home rather than a hotel, so instead of twenty bedrooms it has eight suites with ten bedrooms, each one huge and furnished in her own way, with frescoes on the walls.
There's a garden of lavender, roses and cypresses with a tiny chapel, a pool in the olive grove looking up to the hilltop town, and a limonaia where most meals happen under the portico. Mathew and Nigel cook three and four courses at lunch and dinner from what's in season, and guests tell me it's the best food they've eaten in Italy.
We live here. This is our life, and you're invited into it.
There are over a dozen retreats around here run by people who fly in for the week. This isn't one of them. I raised my three children in these olive groves, Emma restored the villa as her family's home, and the cooks, the winemaker and the olive oil producers are our friends. You arrive as our guest and leave as our friend.
I'm not an artist myself. I host the artists, and I host you. What we share is the slowing down, the return to nature, noticing a sunset, being fully present on a walk or at the studio table.
- Over twenty years living in Umbria, three children raised here
- Olive oil farmer, with neighbors who are winemakers and chefs
- Five art weeks hosted at the villa, and guests who come back
No middlemen on any part of your week. The drivers, the cooks and the tastings are people we know, and by the end of the week they're yours too.
One villa, four artists. Choose your week.
Every week is seven days and six nights with a working artist in residence. No experience needed. We welcome amateurs, seasoned artists, and those merely curious alike.
Medieval Book Illumination
Real gold leaf, ornate initials and medieval patterns.
Julia started illuminating after a visit to the Gutenberg shop in Mainz, and told the head of the Gutenberg Foundation "I can do that" before she had ever tried. She has illuminated for the Gutenberg shop since 2013 and holds a doctorate in book studies. She teaches gilding, ornamental lettering, and the tools and colors of the old book illustrators. It's our one summer week, and a meditative one for a busy mind.
Rooms open, first choice of suites
Gelliprint & Collage
The simplest form of print art, and the most laughter.
Cynthia Thomasset, a licensed therapist and collage artist from Philadelphia, came as a guest in 2025 and printed so much that she came back to teach color mixing, arrangement and botanical printing on gelli plates. Kitty Corrigan co-teaches and leads morning yoga, and the week has a wellness day with the pool, a massage and the gardens. Expect zero pressure, vino and dancing far into the night.
7 of 14 places taken, many by returning guests
Lino Printing
Choose an image, carve it, and print it on paper, cards and fabric.
Jan taught graphic design for over thirty years and wrote two books on design history, on Unimark International and on Lella and Massimo Vignelli. You carve soft-cut blocks, easy on the hands, and print patterns and single images on paper and fabric with inks that wash off with soap and water. Jan came to two of our etching weeks as a guest, where the group voted her Studio Sage.
5 of 14 places taken
Botanical Monotypes & Tetra Pak
Leaves from the villa's gardens, juice cartons from home, and a printing press.
Petra is a Czech experimental printmaker and art therapist who teaches educators, artists and children in her own studio in Brno. She'll have you printing with botanicals from the gardens and etching on milk cartons, even if you don't draw, and then turning your prints into accordion books, cards and notebooks.
Rooms open, first choice of suites
"This place is my new sanctuary. I'm coming back next year."A guest of 24, who has already paid her deposit for 2027
"This is not just about the art."Said by several guests, June 2026
And everything is taken care of
- Your room: six nights in one of eight suites, each with its own bathroom
- Every meal at the villa: breakfast, lunch and dinner by our chefs, Mathew and Nigel, with local wine
- The studio: art every day in the old cantina with the artist in residence, and every material provided
- A taste of the place: a wine tasting with a sommelier, an olive oil tasting, and a pasta-making class
- A day out: a hilltop town in Umbria or Tuscany, then aperitivo on the shore of Lago Trasimeno
- Getting there: transfers from Chiusi-Chianciano Terme station on arrival and departure days
Not included: flights, travel insurance, and meals and drinks in the villages.
What the seven days are like.
The villa opens at four. We collect you from Chiusi-Chianciano Terme station, Emma shows you to your room, and we meet for the welcome circle and a tour of the studio. Aperitivo is in the limonaia, followed by the first dinner of traditional Umbrian dishes.
Breakfast is from eight. The studio runs through the morning and again in the afternoon, in the old cantina with its stone fireplace, flagstone floors and olive presses, with lunch at the villa in between.
One evening the sommelier brings the wine, and another we walk up to Panicale to learn to swirl, sniff and sip olive oil. There is a pasta class, aperitivo on the Terrace Suite's balcony, and dinner at the villa on most nights.
We spend one day in a Tuscan or Umbrian hilltop town to wander, sketch, shop and people-watch in a piazza, then take aperitivo on the shore of Lago Trasimeno and dinner out at a place the locals love.
After breakfast and a round of goodbyes, we drive you back to the station by mid-morning, with everything you made and a few new friends.
Each week's full itinerary, with times, is yours on the call.
It's seven in the evening below Panicale. The studio has emptied, there's ink under your nails, and somebody has opened a bottle from the vineyard down the road. The limonaia smells of lemon leaves and rosemary, the villa walls have turned from apricot to pink, and Nigel is telling the table what's for dinner.
Who's to say you're not an artist?
Every week has amateurs, seasoned artists and the merely curious at the same table. The artist starts everyone from scratch, and the techniques suit beginners: gelli printing is the simplest form of print art, and Petra's monotypes are quick, adjustable and easy at any level. A young woman in medicine who told us she didn't care for the art made 62 prints.
I'm not an artist either. Guidance, encouragement, time to experiment and a new setting where you're undefined turn out to be all it takes.
Everyone is born an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
Pablo PicassoComing on your own
Many guests travel alone, and some say afterwards they were glad, because they never had to wonder whether a friend was enjoying it as much as they were. Fourteen people around one table for six nights become friends quickly. You arrive as our guest and leave as our friend.
Is this your kind of week?
It's for you if
- Italy has been on your list for years, whether you've been once or never
- You used to make art, or you've always wanted to start
- You'd happily come on your own and leave with friends
- A long table and good conversation matter to you as much as the studio
- You'd love a week of floating through the days without making decisions
It's not for you if
- You like 5* modern cookie cutter hotels
- You eat fast food, take away, pre-packaged meals
- You love living in a concrete jungle
- You hate the smell of lemon trees and the feel of grass underfoot
What comes home with you.
Guests tell me they go home bolder. They sign up for the art class they'd been putting off, order a gelli plate for the kitchen table, and make their own pasta on a Sunday. They write to the women they met at the villa.
One guest flew to Madrid on her own to see Bruce Springsteen, something she says she would never have done before that week. Camaraderie makes everyone so brave! And a 24-year-old told me, "This place is my new sanctuary, I'm coming back next year." She has already paid her deposit.
Three steps to Umbria.
Book your call
We talk about you, which week suits you, and what the days are actually like. You get The Umbria Insider List on the call, and the Villa Book with every suite and every week once you've chosen.
Choose your room
A deposit holds your suite, and the rest can be paid in parts until 60 days before your week.
Get ready for Italy
Cynthia helps with trains, private cars and the days before and after, as she has for travelers for twenty-one years.
Book your call with Cynthia.
It's a conversation, not a pitch. I'll ask about you first, what you'd love from a week in Italy and whether you've made art before, and then we'll look at which week and which room suit you. If it isn't your moment, I'll tell you so.
Before you book.
In a world changing so fast, it's a true blessing living where so little does.
CynthiaWhat could a week in the green heart of Italy teach you about yourself?
Come find out. Book a call, and I'll tell you what the week is actually like, ask what you're hoping for, and help you choose your week and your room.
Cynthia