'We hear about the important things, like the Twin Towers, but we don't hear about other news' - here Lorenzo paused for an example - 'like Marlon Brando's latest marriage.' The example was apposite. The fact that Brando died in July 2004 showed that Lorenzo was hardly a Heat-reading celebrity obsessive. But that wasn't a surprise: he lives in the Convento di San Francesco, a former Franciscan friary in Tuscany that is now a very unusual luxury hotel, where televisions are banned and newspapers are a rarity.
After turning off the crowded Rome-Florence autostrada, I had followed narrow winding lanes up to the convento, high in the hills above Cetona near the border with Umbria. It was founded in 1212 and has been painstakingly restored. Transformed into a luxury hotel with one of the best restaurants in Tuscany, it is run by a small community of young people and is practically self-sufficient; it also produces olive oil, wine, jams and small gifts to sell to visitors.
On my arrival, Lorenzo took me on a tour of the convento. A tall, dark-haired Florentine, Lorenzo has had drug problems and, as we wandered through the medieval cloisters, he explained that most of the members of the community are former drug addicts and alcoholics; a few had suffered from anorexia or depression or other related problems. They live together, sleeping four or five to a room and working in the convent's gardens, its kitchens, or its grounds.
Lorenzo works as a waiter in the restaurant, so he showed me the old wine-cellar created by the friars, complete with a statue of St Francis blessing dusty bottles of 1950s Chateau Margot. In the large church he pointed out a fresco of the saint with two of his companions that had been uncovered during the restoration work.
Then he showed me the huge, wood-fired bread ovens and a room that features a large, golden Buddha (apparently the enlightened one is considered a precursor to St Francis). He explained that though he receives no wages, no one in the community has to pay to live there. Nonetheless, there are strict rules - including no drinking or smoking - and family visits are allowed only every five months.
While the community lives in one wing of the monastery, in another there are eight rooms set aside for guests and it was here that Lorenzo left me. The rooms combine luxury with monastic minimalism. Everything is solid and well made - all dark woods, terracotta and marble.
Indeed, it was difficult to find anything redolent of the modern world. Momentarily at a loss as to what to do, I gazed across the convento's gardens and over the valley below. It was easy to imagine oneself back in the times of St Francis himself, when the friars would have lived a hard and simple life here.
The restaurant dispelled any such ascetic thoughts. I imagine that few other closed communities run restaurants. I can't believe that any offer restaurants that could equal that of the convento. My meal consisted of six courses and included a liver terrine, monkfish served with a sauce created from onions from Tropea in Calabria (famous for their sweetness), salmon on a bed of fennel, ravioli stuffed with beef, and duck thighs cooked in a mace sauce. Innumerable varieties of bread came and went, and the meal had begun with various antipasti: prosciutto, salami, an olive pate. Many of the products came from the convento's own gardens.
After apologising for the 'simplicity' of the meal, the chef, Walter Tripodi from Calabria, told me how he had discovered the convento after asking for help from his local priest for his drug problems. The priest told him about the Mondo X organisation, which was set up by a Franciscan friar called Padre Eligio, and now runs a number of communities around Italy. Arriving at the convento with no experience, he discovered that he enjoyed working in the kitchens and began teaching himself how to cook, with some help from local chefs who came to give lessons.
Both Walter and Lorenzo were happy to talk to me about their experiences, but it would be perfectly possible for guests at the convento to go away with little or no knowledge of the community that runs it. During the day the young people from the community are a constant but unobtrusive presence. At breakfast one of them serves you a mini-banquet of various breads and cheeses, prosciutto, honey, jams and dolci at a huge wooden table in a dining room near the bedrooms.
As you pass them going about their daily chores in the hotel or the gardens, they greet you with a warm 'buon giorno', but most are too shy to engage in conversation.
Shyness is certainly not a characteristic of the community's founder. A jovial, slightly rotund 76-year-old dressed in the brown habit of the Franciscans, he doesn't mince his words. Most drug addicts are unusually intelligent and sensitive people, he told me; the young people that come to him can almost always be helped.
The convento is certainly anomalous: wealthy visitors paying to stay in a luxury hotel with a five-star restaurant, sleeping and eating alongside the recovering addicts, the ex-alcoholics, the tormented and the depressive. But more than the food or the beauty of the surroundings, the marvel of the place lies in their achievement in rebuilding their lives.
As I drive away, I reflect that it's not often that I have eaten so well in such a good cause.
· Convento di San Francesco, Cetona, Italy (00 39 0578 238261, email: info@lafrateria.it). A room at the convento costs €220 (breakfast included); a meal costs approximately €80, plus wine.
