The Best In Italy

Like the European aristocrats in Henry James novels, Brandolini trades in connections, linking New World money with Old World nobility and property. Financier Felix Rohatyn, film mogul Paula Wagner, and ad supremo Charles Saatchi have all been clients of Brandolini's. When Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were still married and sought a secluded Tuscan bolt-hole, the Contessa secured them the Villa Pisana, a stately 19th-century mansion discreetly tucked into a 7,400-acre estate outside Pisa. Sting, a longtime client of Brandolini's, once brought along his mobile studio to record an album in his rental villa. Brandolini persuaded the owners--who weren't quite sure what this blonde inglese actually did--not to balk at the trucks and hordes of technicians"