Jen Atkin’s Glamorous Trip Through Italy With Her Husband, Girlfriends, and Dog Roo

Coming from the modish and modern city of Los Angeles, celebrity hairstylist Jen Atkin wanted someplace with “old world charm” for her vacation. So she and her husband, Mike Rosenthal, settled on Monteverdi, a glamorous hilltop resort in Tuscany just outside of the medieval town of Sarteano. “Monteverdi is ancient and a UNESCO heritage site. So just imagining what it was like hundreds of years before cars were invented, everything moving by horseback, no electricity, no modern communication—it’s all fascinating,” she tells Vogue. “You feel like you’re in a Disney movie.”

In this fantasy film, Atkin, Rosenthal, and their friends had quite a set of idyllic adventures. They took a group cooking class where they made pasta and fried stuffed zucchini blossoms. They hiked through a forest and discovered Etruscan burial sites. They listened to Brahms at an ancient Romanesque church. Oh, and they drank—this is Tuscany, after all—at the Bulgari family vineyard, Podernuovo a Palazzone.

Then it was off to Lake Como, where the crew bopped around the lakefront to Villa D’Este, Il Sereno Como, and Grand Hotel Tremezzo. The latter hotel evoked another cinematic comparison. “It’s fresh out of a Wes Anderson movie. Such character and grandiosity, beautiful sculpted gardens, the floating pool, amazing service. It faces the town of Bellagio across the lake, so you have a spectacular view that changes radically with the changing sunlight,” Atkin says of the iconic art nouveau palazzo.

Below, see how Atkin—and her glamorous group—gallivanted through Italy.