Wellness retreats tend to follow a script: dawn yoga, silent meals, ice baths, lights out by eight. Freelance journalist invited to plenty of them recently decided to flip the format entirely, booking a villa where feeling good meant pasta making, barefoot tennis and long dinners with friends instead of breathwork and solitude. The setting she picked for this 'anti-retreat' was Oliveto Estate in Le Marche, on Italy's often-overlooked eastern coast.
Le Marche sits between the Sibillini mountains and the Adriatic, and the estate makes the most of it: two villas sleeping 22 in total (Villa Oliveto for eight, Villa Olivo for 14), set in olive groves with open views towards the coast. What sets it apart locally is that it's the only purpose-built wellness property in the area — so you get hotel-grade facilities with the feel of a private home. There's a spa with sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi, a Technogym-equipped gym, a yoga deck and studio for sound baths, plus barre, yoga and Pilates on demand. Tennis courts come with coaching if you want it.
The real draw, though, is how flexible it all is. Guests get pre-arrival itinerary planning and a concierge throughout, so you can build days around whatever 'well' means to you. In practice that looked like silk scarf printing with local artisans, hikes down to the beach, pasta-making sessions, and plenty of unscheduled hours for swimming and reading. Evenings revolved around food from Antonella, the in-house cook, whose menus leaned local and generous — homemade pizza, beef ragu pappardelle — rather than calorie-counted.
One outing worth copying: dinner at Contrada San Savino, a nearby agriturismo that's less rustic farm restaurant and more showcase for contemporary rural cooking. Think beef carpaccio with figs and pickled turnips, sweet sticky pork skewers and chicken livers, all coming out of an open kitchen run by a young team championing the region's produce.
The verdict from this experiment: wellness doesn't have to mean discipline. The combination of a calm setting, genuinely personalised service and a loose, self-directed schedule delivered the reset a rigid retreat usually promises — with more laughing along the way.
For travellers, Oliveto Estate suits groups of friends or multi-generational families who want a private villa holiday with wellness infrastructure bolted on, rather than a bootcamp. Book the larger Villa Olivo if you're hosting a group retreat; you won't need to leave the grounds unless you fancy it.
