Umbrian idyll

7 June 2008

Taki lives the High Life

It’s a stunning, 18th-century Florentine-style villa, Palazzo Terranova, situated on a green hillside in the northern tip of Umbria, on the Tuscan border. The house is an architectural jewel, with the intimacy of a private family home with its eight bedrooms decorated in the timeless elegance of Palladian tradition. My room, the Bellini, had 20-foot ceilings with painted beams, a large fireplace, and looked out to a breathtaking landscape of hills and valleys of olive woodlands, terraced lawns and gardens. In the four days and nights I was there, I could not get enough of a somewhat prosaic pursuit, looking out of the window.

But it was Marion and Philippe’s friends who made the difference. They always do, by the way. The people, that is. No matter how fantastic the venue, if the guests are low-lifes, you might as well pack it in. Especially today, when low-lifes are extremely rich and show off their ill-gotten gains by giving parties covered by Hello!. Needless to say, none of us were Hello! material. No footballers, no retailers, no rock royalty. No celebs. If you closed your eyes and listened to the badinage it could have been prewar, without the prejudice. And I mean the first one, the one that did the dynasties in. There were German and Italian nobles, a Polish prince and princess, some very young and beautiful girls who were friends of Henri Lambert, Philippe and Marion’s son, and yours truly, alas, the worst behaved but suddenly very popular when someone pushed me into the swimming pool while fully clothed and saying goodbye to my hosts. (I deserved it.)

Two of the guests were museum curators and had a field day telling the rest of us dummies all about the medieval surrounding towns, Cortona, Gubbio, Assisi and Perugia. I learned all about the Etruscans, visited pinacoteche and churches, but mostly I got drunk. The place and my fellow guests were too splendid not to. One must always try to improve no matter how perfect one feels. Drink will do that in a jiffy. Incidentally, the food was so good and light, I lost weight after four days of debauch. The Lamberts should run a fat farm instead of a bank.

The sad part, of course, is that it’s all over. The last time I went to a four-day party was back in 1963, at Edmond de Rothschild’s blast in Megève. (A cousin of Philippe Lambert, incidentally.) But back then we were too many, including celebs, and I was 26 years old and unable to take in the culture. Thank God, for that. Megève has as much culture as Gstaad. This time, a mature 71, I made my way around Umbria like Bernard Berenson, or Harold Acton, looking, judging, praising and disapproving. And if you believe that, you obviously are in the state I was in all last weekend.