A family pool day at Casetta Prima, Vinci: an honest review

A month ago we spent €800 on a five-star pool day and called it one of the best days of our Florentine summer. This review is the other half of that story. On Saturday 8 August we drove out to Casetta Prima (the sign and the booking page also write it Casetta I^), an agriturismo in the hills of Vinci with a saltwater pool looking over a Tuscan valley, and I spent most of the day in the water with my son. The usual promise first: we paid our own way, in full, and nobody at the venue knew this was a review. The day and the verdict are ours; AI only helped with the writing.

What €30 actually buys, exactly

Let us be precise, because this is the number readers will act on. Pool admission is €30 per person, and that is the door, not the day. It includes your sunbed and a gazebo. It does not include lunch. It is charged in full for everyone: there is no discount for children, and under-18s must be accompanied and supervised by an adult. Booking online is required, places are limited, and booking the pool automatically reserves your table for an à la carte lunch. The pool runs 10:00 to 18:30 (Casetta Prima).

What our day actually cost, as observed on 8 August 2026: five of us paid €150 at the door, lunch came to €154.00 on the receipt, and a spritz at €10 and a fruit plate at €12 arrived later off the bill. Call it roughly €326 for five, about €65 a head, covering the door, the lunch bill and those two items, with a few pool-bar drinks, the €3 iced coffee among them, sitting outside it. Half of that day is the door and half is the table, and you should budget for both.

The pool, and why the water feels different

The pool is the reason to come. It is a genuine saltwater pool, and my eyes noticed before my brain did: a full day in the water with a four-and-a-half-year-old and no sting, no red eyes, none of the harsh smell you brace for at a hotel pool. I assumed there was simply no chlorine. That is not quite right, and the truth is more interesting. A saltwater pool makes its own chlorine on site, continuously, by passing the salt water through an electrolytic cell, instead of dosing the water in batches. The steady low level keeps down the by-products called chloramines, which are what actually sting your eyes and give a pool its smell (CDC), and in an open-air pool on a hillside, what little forms disperses on the breeze anyway. It is not chlorine-free. It is chlorine handled better, in the open air, and you can feel the difference from inside the water.

And from inside the water you also get the view: vineyards, olives, the valley folding away toward the coast, one of those Tuscan panoramas you do not tire of. The space around the pool matters as much as the water. Wide lawns run beside it where children can run themselves tired, and I had counted on them: I arrived fairly sure my four-and-a-half-year-old would not go near the water. He barely left it. The lawns went mostly unused, which is a pleasant way to be wrong. Even with every lounger taken this would not feel packed. Drinks came to us at the pool, at no extra charge as far as we understood, though the venue does not publish this as a promise, so treat it as our experience rather than the rule. The order that summed up the day: an iced coffee, €3, delivered to the sunbed. Hold that number for the comparison later.

Lunch on the veranda

The restaurant does not behave like it belongs to a modest farm stay. The room is spotless and beautifully kept, panoramic, with a handsome wooden ceiling; it looks and carries itself like a four-star hotel dining room. The estate around it is real: the family has farmed these lands for three generations, with harvests renewed for more than seventy years and a cantina the venue itself dates to 1952 (Casetta Prima). Staff told us the winemaking history runs closer to a hundred years; the venue's own seventy-plus figure says otherwise, so take the century as the family's fond telling. We were also told the restaurant in its current form dates from 2017, which matches what the venue calls its turning-point year.

What we ate, by menu name, prices as observed on 8 August 2026: the fusilloni with rocket and walnut pesto, black garlic cream and citrus at €20, which is mine, ordered without the garlic cream for one of us; the polpo piastrato, orange-lacquered octopus with carrot and ginger cream, at €24; and twice, because two of us could not resist it, the tortino di pappa al pomodoro with burrata stracciatella and datterino tomatoes at €17. That last one deserves a sentence: pappa al pomodoro is the most homely peasant dish in Tuscany, stale bread and tomato, and here it has been rebuilt into a composed plate wearing burrata. There is also a kids' menu, which I rate highly as a signal of intent, and the chicken nuggets and chips on it were genuinely good, which I rate even more highly. Coperto is €4 a person, higher than the city norm, and worth knowing before you sit down.

Three tasting menus run per person, cover and drinks excluded: Boschi e Colline at €39, a new seafood menu Oltre la Costa at €44, and Radici at €53. The estate's wines pair with them, led by L'Orlando, a Supertuscan carrying, as the menu puts it, the name of the estate's founder, offered on the menu we photographed as a three-vintage flight at €24. The honest confession: despite all that history, we drank spritz. The day was hot, and a cold spritz at €10 beat a wine flight, even a storied one.

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A confession before the criticisms. I photographed the pool, the view, the veranda, the menus, even the receipt. Then the food arrived, I was hungry, my son was hungrier, and I ate my evidence. Every meal photo you would expect here lives only in five happy memories; the sole survivor is the fruit plate, which had the good fortune to arrive when the pace had slowed. I mention it because a review that admits its gap beats one that quietly hides it: the dishes above are named from the menus we photographed, and judged from the plates we emptied.

The honest criticisms of the table: the food was delicious and the portions were small. Prices lean high for an agriturismo. The menu is short, and I wanted more choice, particularly more meat; a veal steak would not go amiss. None of this stopped us cleaning every plate.

Mattia, and the service

Service can make a middling day good and a good day memorable, and here it was the latter. A special mention for Mattia, who served us at the bar for coffee in the morning and again at lunch: kind, respectful, professional, warm and attentive without ever being showy. This is how service should be.

What is not perfect

Reviews without a downside are adverts, so here is ours, led by the one that matters most. Children pay full price, and that is the wrong call. €30 for an adult with a sunbed, a gazebo and that view is fair. €30 for a four-and-a-half-year-old is a family of four paying €120 before anyone eats. Even a €10 reduction would change how families read the price list, and not for the money so much as for the message: it would say families are accounted for. That is my one real ask of a place that otherwise welcomes children unusually well. I will come back to this when I set the two days side by side, because there is a fairer reading of that €30 than the one I have just given.

The smaller things: the portions and the short menu, said above. And the pool area needs minor maintenance, small things, a few hundred euros' worth of touch-ups. I had entirely forgotten I was at a modest farm property rather than a grand hotel until I noticed them, which is itself a compliment: they were the only reminder all day.

Against the five-star day

We published a pool day at Collegio alla Querce in July, a five-star day in the Florentine hills, and this is its honest counterweight. Same summer, same idea, very different money.

Now the family arithmetic, because it cuts both ways and that is what makes it worth doing. Take two adults and one child. At Collegio alla Querce, entry is about €200 net after the credit, with the child free; with lunch the day lands around €380. At Casetta Prima, entry is €90 with the child paying full, and with a proportionate share of a lunch like ours the day lands around €183. So the mid-price day is about half the price of the five-star one, not a fifth of it, and the gap narrows precisely because the cheaper place charges for children and the expensive one does not. That inversion is the most interesting fact in this review, and it is why the children's pricing is my lead criticism rather than a footnote.

There is a fairness to that €30 I did not appreciate until I set the two days side by side. At Collegio alla Querce a child gets in free, but when we went free did not come with a sunbed of their own; at Casetta Prima a child costs €30 and gets a full sunbed, the same as anyone else. Whether that is worth paying depends entirely on the age of your child. With a baby who will spend the day on your lap it is money you would rather keep. With a four-year-old who wants somewhere to drip dry between swims, it is the difference between a place at the pool and a tolerated extra.

It also explains something I had put down to luck. The pool never felt crowded, and the reason turns out to be structural rather than fortunate: admissions are bounded by sunbeds, so a fully booked day still cannot become a crowded one. That is a quietly good piece of design, and it is bought with exactly the money I spent the last section complaining about.

And if you want the whole comparison in a single number: at the five-star pool a spritz is €20; here an iced coffee arrives at your sunbed for €3.

Who it is for, and getting there

This is a day for families and for anyone who wants the Tuscan pool-and-view experience without five-star money. I got a full day in the water with my son, proper time, the kind you do not get around a city itinerary, without breaking the bank. The restaurant leans luxury and prices with it, the pool leans simple and honest, and the combination works. We would go back.

The practicalities, plainly. Vinci is a day trip, not a hill above Florence: Leonardo's birthplace, roughly 35km west of the city, and the agriturismo sits just outside the town itself. You need a car. The no-car route exists on paper, a train to Empoli and the sparse line 49 bus to Vinci town then a hilly walk, and on Ferragosto the bus does not run at all (Autolinee Toscane), so treat it as impractical for a pool day. Book the pool online before you go; it is required, and it reserves your lunch table in the same step. In mid-August the venue stays open, Ferragosto included, when the à la carte gives way to a fixed three-course seafood lunch at €44 (Casetta Prima). If you are weighing August against the city itself, our August in Florence guide makes the case that water is the season's best trick, and this is the affordable version of it.

For the city's tables at ground level, start with where to eat in Florence, part of our Florence guides.