Retreats in Italy

Small contemplative experiences in Florence, Tuscany, and Bologna for anyone seeking rest, creative renewal, or space to write.

AFor Anyone Longing to Slow Down

These retreats are designed for the moment when your inner pace no longer matches the pace of your life. When the things that used to restore you have stopped working. When you’re living from obligation rather than anything that feels like yours.

Not executive optimization. Not productivity intervention. Something quieter.

The work of remembering who you are when the noise falls away.

Italy provides the landscape. The small group provides the container. The days provide the space. What emerges is yours.

Small Groups.

Every retreat is capped at 8-12 participants. Intimacy is not incidental. It’s what makes depth possible.

Italy As Teacher.

Florence’s art, Tuscany’s landscapes, Bologna’s sacred sites are not backdrop. They’re part of the curriculum. The light, the architecture, the walking pace; all of it shapes what becomes available.

Presence Before Productivity.

These retreats create genuine space for slowing down. Clarity and insight emerge when they’re ready, not when they’re forced.

Three Retreats

The Way of Da Vinci

Florence, Italy | 7 days | 8-12 participants

A creative immersion for anyone who wants to recover their capacity to see.

Drawing on Leonardo da Vinci’s practice of observation, we use photography, drawing, and deep looking as contemplative tools. Not to produce art, but to recover the quality of attention that makes a full life possible.

Florence becomes the studio. The Uffizi, the Arno, the streets at dawn. You learn to notice what’s already there.

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The Way of St. Francis

Florence and Tuscany, Italy | 7 days | 8-12 participants

A contemplative retreat for anyone seeking stillness, simplicity, and the particular kind of clarity that comes from slowing all the way down.

Guided by Franciscan practice and the landscape that shaped it, this retreat moves through sacred sites, contemplative walks, and honest reflection. Florence’s churches, Tuscan hillsides, time for silence, time for conversation.

The invitation is rest. The method is presence.

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The Way of St. Catherine of Bologna

Bologna | 7 days | 8-12 participants | Launching 2027

A writing retreat for women who write because they have to.

Not a craft workshop. A space for writing as practice, as excavation, as a way of finding out what you actually think and know. For anyone with something in them that needs to come out on the page: a book, a memoir, an essay, a voice not yet fully claimed.

Bologna provides the setting. The small group provides witness. The days provide structure. The page provides the path.

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What People Ask

When you can’t remember the last time you were genuinely quiet. When urgency has become your default operating system. When you’re living well enough on the outside but something essential feels missing on the inside.

These retreats are designed for exactly that moment.

Gentle. Most days involve walking, time outdoors, and movement at a pace that allows for noticing rather than arriving. You don’t need to be an athlete. You need to be comfortable with slowness.

No. Whether you paint, build organizations, raise children, or tend a garden, you’re already in the practice of bringing something into the world. These retreats are for anyone longing to reconnect with that impulse at a deeper level.

Every retreat is 8-12 participants. That’s not a marketing constraint. It’s what makes the depth of the experience possible.

Spiritually grounded but not religious. The work draws from contemplative traditions and the quality of attention that Italy’s sacred spaces make available. People of all belief systems, and none, are welcome. What’s required is not belief but genuine willingness to slow down and pay attention.

Full details are shared in the retreat prospectus, which you receive when you inquire or join a waitlist. Investment varies based on accommodation and retreat structure, and is confirmed individually with each participant.

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Join the Waitlist

These retreats aren’t standard getaways. They’re invitations to return to something.

If something on this page has called to you, that’s usually reason enough. Joining a waitlist is simply an expression of interest, not a commitment. You’ll receive retreat details and early access to registration when dates are confirmed.