Rossella Beaugié grew up in Palermo surrounded by Greek temples, Baroque facades and Art Nouveau flourishes – though, she admits, it took moving away to真正 see what Sicily had. A former cell biologist who met her British husband Huw while doing a PhD in Paris, she made one of travel's great career pivots: the pair launched a small company called Think Sicily, running walking tours with a few villas on the side. The villas won. Today, as The Thinking Traveller – which marks its 25th anniversary in 2027 – it's one of the only villa firms acting as sole agent for every property in its portfolio, spanning Italy, Greece and Corsica, with personal relationships with each owner.
Her formative hotel moment came at Hotel Raya on Panarea in the Aeolian Islands, watching Stromboli erupt across the water. It's also where she and Huw decided to start the company, and where they founded the Sicily Environment Fund – one island shaping a whole career. More recently she's been returning to the Ionian Riviera, to Rocca delle Tre Contrada, a converted wine estate on the slopes of Mount Etna, where head chef Dora turns estate-grown produce and local albacore tuna into the Sicilian food she can't get enough of. Volcanic soil, she says, gives the produce an intensity you notice immediately.
Her travel philosophy is refreshingly unflashy. True luxury, she argues, isn't extravagance but having someone who knows you well enough to anticipate needs and fix things when plans wobble. She prefers private homes to hotel suites, judges a room by crisp linen and what Italians call profumo di pulito – the scent of clean – and always pauses for a quiet moment of gratitude before checking out. Last summer she put that into practice on the Ionian island of Meganisi in Greece: two weeks of proper Italian-style villeggiatura, no agenda, just sunrise yoga, swimming, kayaking and her kids playing guitar.
She has tips for anyone who'd rather travel thoughtfully than tick boxes. In Venice during the Biennale, she and Huw deliberately ditched Google Maps and wandered by light and curiosity, finding tiny churches and artisan workshops in near-empty corners of the city. Her most eye-opening trip was Burma, where her first brush with Buddhism changed how she thinks about nature, wellbeing and pace of life. And the one journey still on her list? India – the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, heritage homestays, a yoga and Ayurveda retreat, then the Andaman Islands for scuba diving and responsibly sourced seafood.
For travellers, this is a useful window into how a top luxury villa specialist actually thinks: favour houses over hotels, slow down in places you know, buy directly from artisans (her ceramics came from ceramicist Duchess Guarini at Palazzo Ducale Guarini in Puglia), and treat getting mildly lost as part of the itinerary. If her standards reflect what The Thinking Traveller looks for in a property – views, light, spotless linen, warm staff – it's a decent checklist for booking any villa holiday in the Mediterranean.
Story via Elite Traveler.
