La Réserve opens its first address in Italy on 16 October, in a palazzo on Via Santo Spirito. La Réserve Firenze is six private apartments inside Palazzo Segni, in the Oltrarno, a few minutes’ walk from the Ponte Vecchio and the Pitti Palace, restored by the French interior architects Gilles & Boissier. It is not a hotel: there are no rooms, only apartments, each with its own kitchen. There is a butler, a concierge on call around the clock, breakfast served in the apartment, a library, a billiard room and a terrace that looks over the dome of Santo Spirito at sunset. Here is the palazzo, apartment by apartment, and what the house behind it already runs in Paris, Geneva, Ramatuelle and Zurich.
Palazzo Segni and its frescoes
The palazzo stands at Via Santo Spirito 6, with a side on Via Coverelli. La Réserve’s own description is brief and precise: Palazzo Segni “has belonged to some of the city’s most eminent families”, it is “a magnificent example of Renaissance architecture”, and it “was later enhanced by splendid frescoes which still adorn some of the bedrooms, bathrooms and lounges”. The restoration created the six apartments and a set of shared rooms around a patio with carved friezes, period columns and a stone fountain in the shape of a lion’s head. The street is an address with company. La Réserve points out that Via Santo Spirito “hosts the palazzos of Florentine families such as the Frescobaldis, who still reside there today”, and that Brunelleschi’s basilica of Santo Spirito dominates the square that bears its name, a short walk away.
Gilles & Boissier, and a rule of restraint
Patrick Gilles and Dorothée Boissier founded their studio more than twenty years ago, and they describe the Florence project on their own site in a few short lines. The intention, they write, was to bring in more light, to clarify the original volumes and to keep the discreet charm of the building. The apartments are meant to be luxurious but personal, lived in, with calm materials, “une atmosphère subtilement wabi-sabi” and a carefully sourced collection of art. Their summary of the whole project is a single sentence: the architectural choice “a été celui de la retenue, presque du silence”, restraint, almost silence. They also describe the building itself. It had been asleep for a long time on Via Santo Spirito, and its top floor opens onto the Arno and the city.
Six apartments, from 170 to 210 square metres
Six apartments, five types. Each is described in detail. The one-bedroom with frescoes, 175 square metres for two, has a large lounge under a remarkable ceiling and a separate dining room. The two-bedroom Piano Nobile, 170 square metres on the second floor, faces the patio and Via Coverelli, the quiet side of the house. The two-bedroom with Santo Spirito view, 180 square metres on the top floor, has a large kitchen that looks across the rooftops of the Oltrarno to the basilica’s dome. Two further two-bedroom apartments with frescoes, of 205 and 210 square metres on the first and second floors, have master bedrooms under coffered ceilings with their original frescoes, over Via Santo Spirito. And the duplex, the only apartment for six, has three bedrooms over two floors, 205 square metres inside, a master bedroom with a view of the Arno and a private terrace of 55 square metres with a view all round the city. Twelve bedrooms in all.
| Apartment | Bedrooms | Guests | Size | What sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-Bedroom Apartment with Frescoes | 1 | 2 | 175 sq m | Frescoed lounge, separate dining room |
| 2-Bedroom Apartment Piano Nobile | 2 | 4 | 170 sq m | Second floor, over the patio |
| 2-Bedroom Apartment with Santo Spirito View | 2 | 4 | 180 sq m | Top floor, kitchen facing the dome |
| 2-Bedroom Apartments with Frescoes (two) | 2 | 4 | 205 and 210 sq m | Coffered, frescoed master bedrooms |
| 3-Bedroom Duplex with Terrace | 3 | 6 | 205 sq m plus 55 sq m terrace | Arno view, private terrace |
A hotel’s service, without the hotel
This is La Réserve’s private-homes model. The list of what comes with it is long. Included: a welcome and concierge service 24 hours a day, a maître de maison, housekeeping twice a day, breakfast served in the apartment, laundry, a fitness room with Technogym and Pent equipment, and the courtesy bar, stocked for the terrace. On request: a private chef, a personal trainer, a yoga teacher, tennis on a private court among olive trees ten minutes away, massages, beauty treatments and a babysitter. Every apartment has its own kitchen. The house suggests cooking with produce from the Santo Spirito market in the morning, or handing the kitchen to a private chef in the evening. Rates are quoted per apartment per night, on request, and the shared rooms, the library, the billiard room, the gym and the patio, belong to whoever is staying.
The house has also put together a programme of Florentine visits and Tuscan days out: Palazzo Pucci, the Ginori 1735 manufactory, the Antico Setificio Fiorentino silk looms, truffles with Savini Tartufi, a cooking class at Harry’s Bar Firenze, the Antinori and Guado al Tasso estates, a day at the Bagno Principe in Forte dei Marmi and an evening on the Arno in a barchetto. And on the terrace, at sunset, the view runs over Santo Spirito to the Pitti Palace. La Réserve’s suggestion for that hour is a Negroni, “invented here in Florence”.
What La Réserve already runs
La Réserve is the signature brand of Michel Reybier Hospitality, and Florence joins a short and consistent list. Four hotels: La Réserve Genève, La Réserve Paris, La Réserve Ramatuelle and La Réserve Eden au Lac in Zurich. Seven private homes: the villa in Geneva, the ten apartments in Paris on the Place du Trocadéro, of 140 to 300 square metres, the villas at Ramatuelle, La Chartreuse de Cos d’Estournel at Saint-Estèphe, a chalet in Val d’Isère, Florence, and six villas on Praslin in the Seychelles, which open on 1 October. In the 2026 MICHELIN Key selection, La Réserve Paris and La Réserve Ramatuelle hold three Keys, Eden au Lac two and Genève one, and Le Gabriel, Jérôme Banctel’s restaurant at La Réserve Paris, holds three stars. Michel Reybier wrote the line that explains the Florence apartments better than any brochure.
“My wish is that each of our guests, well-known or unknown but always recognized as significant individuals, should feel at home while being elsewhere.” Michel Reybier, Michel Reybier Hospitality.
Florence this autumn
La Réserve Firenze was first announced for June 2026 and now opens on a Friday in the middle of October. The timing is good. Florence has just been rewarded twice. In the 2026 MICHELIN Key selection, Collegio alla Querce, the Auberge Collection hotel, joined the Four Seasons Hotel Firenze with three Keys, and the Four Seasons is number 12 on The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2026. Both are larger hotels on the other bank of the Arno. La Réserve is the opposite proposition: six front doors in the Oltrarno, the district where, in La Réserve’s words, “Florence has kept its soul”, and where the market of Santo Spirito is still part of the morning. It is the most precise date in our calendar of European openings, and one of the smallest.
The Luxury.it perspective
The most interesting openings of 2026 are small, and La Réserve Firenze is the smallest of them: six apartments, twelve bedrooms, one patio with a lion’s-head fountain. What makes it matter is the model. A palazzo in the Oltrarno becomes a set of private homes with a maître de maison, breakfast in the apartment and a concierge awake all night, run by a house that knows the service from Avenue Gabriel and the Swiss lakes. For a family, the duplex with its 55-square-metre terrace is the address; for a couple, the frescoed one-bedroom is the one the house recommends. And for Florence, which has had its great hotels for a long time, this is a new kind of door on an old street. It opens on 16 October. Book the duplex early.
Related guides
Luxury hotels in Tuscany · Michelin Keys 2026: Italy’s 17 three-key hotels · The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2026 and Italy’s fifteen · Private villas with hotel services
