La Réserve Firenze opens six serviced apartments in a 15th-century palazzo

La Réserve Firenze has opened this autumn in the Oltrarno neighbourhood of Florence, turning a 15th-century palazzo into six generously sized, fully serviced apartments. The building had previously been a warren of studios for foreign students before the conversion began.

Rates start at about $1,500. The house is a ten-minute walk from the Piazza della Signoria, where the Medicis once ruled, yet the streets around it feel residential rather than touristed, a world away from the busier side of the Arno.

The couple behind the conversion

Grégory Marciano, who created the property with his wife Olivia, frames the difference directly. "This is a street where Florentine people live," he says. The couple moved to Florence from Paris in 2019 and wanted a product that felt like belonging to the city.

Interiors come from the French firm Gilles & Boissier, whose Modernist design was executed with close attention to the building's history. The work was carried out with privacy as the organising idea, so the apartments suit high-profile guests who would rather not cross a lobby full of strangers.

Equally, the offering works for newlyweds on an extended honeymoon. That dual brief points to what the Marcianos believe well-heeled locals already know: "If you really want to experience living like a Florentine family right now, this is very similar," Grégory adds.

The couple has taken the idea a step further by offering guests their own villa, once the home of a Gucci family member, along with use of its tennis court. That villa is offered alongside the six apartments rather than as part of the palazzo itself.

Why serviced apartments appeal

Andrea Grisdale, chief executive and founder of the Italy travel specialist IC Bellagio, puts the appeal of this residential, high-touch model in the words of her own clients. Some, she says, ask for an apartment but still want someone to fetch a Coca-Cola at two in the morning.

That expectation of service, layered onto a private apartment, is what seasoned travellers are increasingly requesting, she argues. The format differs from a conventional hotel while retaining the staffing a guest cannot get from a rental.

The opening lands in the Italian offseason, which Grisdale says is an ideal moment to absorb more authentic culture. She draws the contrast with summer, when a hot restaurant's owner is unlikely to be at the end of a meal sharing a limoncello.

Local tips from IC Bellagio

Grisdale supplied a handful of further recommendations for feeling like a local. The classic restaurant is Cibrèo, a Florentine favourite that turns peasant dishes such as stuffed pigeon into fine dining, and which pointedly does not lean on pasta.

For coffee she names Dinicaffè, the only roaster in the historic centre of Florence, where a tour ends with a chance to take home its single-source beans. The aperitivo spot is Giacosa 1815, long heralded as the birthplace of the Negroni.

Giacosa 1815 is inviting enough that people who start their evenings there often return after dinner for a digestivo. The leather recommendation is Il Bisonte, a boutique selling goods made by artisans who all work within a 19-mile radius of the shop.

That range, from coffee roaster to leather artisan, is the supporting cast to La Réserve Firenze's own pitch. The Marcianos' French savoir faire is applied to a specifically Italian sense of daily life, with the river as the line between the two.

Nothing in the announcement positions La Réserve Firenze as a hotel. It is apartments with a full service layer, and the distinction is the point: guests get their own apartment while staff remain available when a late-night request comes in.

For travellers weighing a serviced stay against a suite, the comparison is the price of privacy against the convenience of a lobby. The apartments start from about $1,500, and the villa with its tennis court gives the opening a second kind of stay.

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Images: La Réserve Firenze