This 12th century castle in the ‘green heart’ of Italy is transforming into an exclusive luxury resort

Antognolla castle in Umbria, “the green heart of Italy,” is being transformed into a Six Senses resort, offering guests and golfers a soothing countryside retreat.

For almost a millennium, the Castle of Antognolla has punctured a skyline of seemingly endless rolling forested hills. Once the site of a Benedictine monastery, it has been a battlefield to bloody sieges, a tomb to a patron saint, and a seat to distinguished noble families. Now, the towering monument is transforming to usher in a new, more peaceful era, one that developers in the Umbria region — Italy’s oft-overlooked “green heart”— hope will see Europe’s leading luxury resort spring forth. Scheduled to open in late 2026, Six Senses Antognolla will see an initial 71-key hotel (16 suites of which will be located in the original castle), a 3,000-square-meter wellness center, and 17 bespoke residences surface among the network of olive groves, vineyards and myriad cypress trees lathered across the undulating 560-hectacre estate. Rooms will offer a panoramic view of the site’s jewel in the crown, an 18-hole golf course with ambitions to break the Spanish and Portuguese hegemony over premier golf destinations on the continent. The sloping 6,884-yard (6,112-meter) setup is the brainchild of prolific designer Robert Trent Jones Jr, and first opened in 1997. Major renovations in 2018 have helped the course to age well, but its lifespan is the blink of an eye in comparison to the castle that towers over its 18th green. When walls inside the crypt below the castle chapel recently fell out, it revealed paintings that date back at least 1,000 years, according to Antognolla director of golf César Burguière, shedding new light on the 6th-century Benedictine monastery that the wider fortress was built around roughly 600 years later.