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"View Slideshow\n\nVilla Cetinale is the epitome of Tuscan grace. Located just outside Siena, Italy, the golden-stucco jewel stands in a rolling landscape of vineyards, olive groves, and forested hills that have remained largely unchanged since the late 17th century, when Cardinal Flavio Chigi, a nephew of Pope Alexander VII, enlarged a modest farmhouse into something more fitting to his position and connections. From the elegant exterior double staircase to the fine symmetry of the fa\u00E7ades, the countryseat is a resplendent tribute to the genius of its architect, Carlo Fontana, a pupil of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the master of Baroque sculpture: perfectly positioned, discreetly ornamented, inarguably sublime. Edith Wharton praised the estate in her 1904 book Italian Villas and Their Gardens, approving of Fontana's wisdom in understanding that only \"the broadest and simplest of lines would be in harmony with so noble a background.\"\n\nNed Lambton, Cetinale's chatelain, admits to having had more ambivalent feelings. Guitarist for a country band called Pearl, TN, he saw the house as the domain of his colorful father, the onetime Conservative M.P. Antony Lambton, who bought the place in 1977 (shortly after his career was derailed by a prostitution scandal). Before he died in 2006, the elder Lambton spent a fortune on the gardens, and he and his partner, Claire Ward, had hung Cetinale's rooms with Renaissance and Old Master paintings. The idea of maintaining all that gave the musician pause.\n\n\"Owning such a villa is an extravagance, one I couldn't really afford,\" says Lambton, who became the seventh Earl of Durham upon his father's death and who lives most of the year in London with his wife, former model Marina Hanbury, and their two-year-old daughter, Stella. (He also has a son, Frederick, and another daughter, Molly, from previous relationships.) \"I saw two options,\" he continues. \"Enjoy Cetinale in its crumbling state, or restore it and rent it out for short periods in order to keep it in the family. Marina and I chose the second course.\"\n\nSince Lambton's father paid more attention to the boxwood hedges and old-fashioned roses than he did to the house itself, the interiors existed in a sort of twilight of stylish dilapidation. The wiring and plumbing were eons old, and the roof leaked. Those drawbacks were quietly endured until 2008, when a fire, caused by a malfunctioning television, swept through the piano nobile. \"The fresco by Luca Signorelli in the entrance hall was burnt to a crisp,\" Lambton says ruefully. On the positive side, the conflagration spurred a thorough renovation that would make the villa as amenable to paying guests as to the casual gatherings of family and friends that he and his wife host throughout the year.\n\nTo restore the 3,300-square-foot structure and its 1,300-square-foot annex, which contains offices and the laundry, the pair hired Bolko von Schweinichen, a Florentine architect known for his reverent handling of historic buildings. \"It took my office a couple of years to study Cetinale in depth and get the permits before the work could begin in 2010,\" says Schweinichen, whose commissions include residences for such clients as landscape designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd and M.P. Lord Cavendish of Furness.\n\nNumbers, more than words, reveal the epic proportions of Cetinale's subtle but complete revival. Some 60 individuals\u2014among them engineers, painters, and general contractors\u2014toiled for three years on the project. Says Lambton, \"Such great workers, the Tuscans\u2014you suddenly realize how the Duomo of Florence came to be.\" Original terra-cotta-tile floors were lifted so more than 6,500 feet of plumbing pipe could be installed, and nearly 10,000 square feet of walls and ceilings were refinished.\n\nThe earl and countess asked London decorator Camilla Guinness, a family friend, to take charge of the interiors, whose pi\u00E8ce de r\u00E9sistance is a dining room muraled with 18th-century scenes of mountains and castles. (Film director Philip Haas used the paradisiacal space, as well as the grounds, in the 2000 movie Up at the Villa.) Admired for an informal style that is at once sophisticated and eclectic, Guinness took on the daunting task with a light hand and a deep familiarity. \"Having spent so much time at Cetinale over the years, I understood Ned's desire to stay true to the original,\" says the decorator, who has a villa nearby.\n\nNonetheless, existing baths were renovated and new ones put in, and a kitchen was added to the ground floor. Decoratively speaking, Guinness focused on repairing and refreshing what was already there: tasseled pelmets, baldachin beds, baroque dining chairs. Longer side rails were ordered so the 18th-century beds could better accommodate 21st-century bodies, and time-darkened paintings were rehung. Since the family possessed a multitude of old damasks and velvets, Guinness explains, \"we used them to reupholster headboards and make decorative cushions.\"\n\nWhen Lambton took on this huge enterprise, it was mostly to honor his father's legacy. Now he finally feels like the lord of the manor. \"Cetinale is still as comfortable as it is beautiful,\" he says, \"but today a light and friendly atmosphere has taken over.\"\n\nView a slide show of the exquisitely restored 17th-century villa."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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