La Lanterna — Restaurant in Unione dei Comuni Valdichiana Senese

We stayed in Sarteano for 8 days in room 108 (half board).||As mentioned by other reviewers this hotel is a gem: beautiful garden, nice pool, spacious, friendly personnel, good location, clean rooms.||||When we arrived there was a honeymoon party going on. Quite surprising but very amusing. During the weekend they are organising weddingbuffets. As they have good isolation firedoors you don't have any noise from this feast.||||Staf speaks only Italian which is inconvenient but at the same time it is a major charm of this hotel. They are trying to communicate by all means and they are very happy if you try some Italian words. Charming.||As they run this hotel as a family and they are doing everything you will find the reception empty ... just like it has to be in a family hotel.||||The family also makes wine (tasty) and olive oil which you can buy.||||Food is served at 20:00 sharp. Sometimes we came back from a trip a few minutes earlier and we had to jump into the restaurant. Quite strange ... but charming ... because fresh tasty food is served right out of the cooking pots. The menu is varying and we ate everything (if you don't like the dishes ... you can always eat à la carte but then you have to pay extra ... but I cannot believe you don't like the menu ... hmmmmm). When you buy drinks by the bottle they keep the rest for the next day ... ideal for buying wine or a bottle of Coca Cola for the kids. One of the waitresses (Rita) stole our hearts.||Sometimes in the morning they started a fire in their grill and pizza oven to have enough heat in the evening to prepare delicious food.||||Housekeeping was doing a good job, fresh sheets every two days. They're doing laundry in the hotel ... and it dries in the garden.||||Rooms were clean and spacious enough. Domotica was installed, surprising. One minor point ... we only had two electrical sockets in our room ... and that is too less when you have to load a camera, cell phones, computer, ... so we had to plan our "loadings".||||In the lobby there's internet access available (not free).||Guests can go to the top of the tower where you have a view over the regioin.||||There's sufficient safe parking around the hotel.||There's a little playground for the children.||||We will go back ... we can surely reccomend this hotel if you like the charmes of a...

La Lanterna is a very good hotel located south of Siena. The area is calm but the small town center of Sarteano (less than 2 kms) has all the facilities you would need. ||The hotel is run by the family, who is also producing wine (pretty good by the way) and olive oil. The rooms are excellent but size may be very different, the best ones being the ones situated in the tower. We had a first a small room but after request we were changed to a much larger room. The hotel is quiet, but this should be the case in almost all Tuscan hotels since people are away most of the time (and Tuscany visitors are, in average, much more civilized than the ones in other areas).||The hotel pool is quite large compared to its size, it has a nice view on the country. There is a very little playground and it seems it is possible to to some horseback riding.||We found the restaurant to serve good food. We had some sophisticated dishes (e.g. seafood) that we did not get in the previous hotel we stayed in. The drawback is it is fixed menu, so if you don't like one dish... It was not our case but might cause an issue.||About the people, it is hard to say since we do not speak Italian and owners do not speak any French or English or Dutch. Communication was limited to the minimum. One thing to note is since it is family run, the service is not as professional as it would be in a 3 stars. We did not care about it but it might annoy some of you (like nobody is sitting at the reception, so you need to find out somebody in the building... this is what happened when we checked in, it was strange since we had the feeling to have entered a phantom vessel :-); at the end we also received a bottle of wine.||The hotel is ideally situated to visit the south part of Tuscany (as of Siena): Montepulciano, Pienza, Arezzo, Cortone, Montalcino... adn why not Roma which is 175 kms away (we took 1h30 to reach the city). For Firenze area, this might not be the best option (we stayed one week in val d'Elsa area to cover Firenze, San GImignano, Pisa, Volterra etc...).||In conclusion, I would say I would rate the hotel higher than 3 stars, the only point you could argue about is the service but since this is not a criteria for us, we really enjoyed the hotel and recommend it for adults wishing to visit this...

My family and I stayed at a house owned by the family who also runs La Lanterna. We ate at the restaurant on several occasions. The restaurant was clean and well-run. The servers speak some English but we were able to speak Italian and communicate easily. The restaurant is on a hill with a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside. The food was absolutely delicious--probably the best we had in Sarteano. This family-run business was also amazingly friendly and accomodating--we received warm, friendly and excellent service. We had some issues with the pool during our stay and the family was extremely apologetic and did everything they could to make our stay a pleasant one. While this place is not in the "old town" I would definitely come back to eat and stay here, it is only a couple of minutes drive from the downtown. They also make EXCELLENT wine--we bought two bottles and only wish we had bought more to take...