If you don't want to stay in a city or town, but want to be close to them, this is the place to stay in San Gimignano. Fantastic rooms overlooking the pool or the vineyards towards the town, great breakfasts with wide variety especially of pastries from the owner's bakery. The hosts were helpful and spoke good English. The pool was so refreshing after a hard day of sight seeing! You need a car if you want to avoid about a 2-3Km walk to the town. Parking is provided.

We loved Podere Sant'Elena!! It was quiet... it was peaceful... and had a great view to San Gimigniano!!! The rooms were very clean and nicely decorated. Our room had a great view but I'm not sure that all rooms were all equal in matters of the view...
The pool was marvellous and a great break from all day excursions around Tuscany.
The stuff was very friendly & helpful even though the reception desk was not open every hour of the day. But I guess it was not really necessery...
The breakfast was very good (super pastries & bread) and get us going till noon!
The location was even greater but you need a car to get around... San Gimignano is so beautiful!!
Overall we had a great time and we will be back!!

Within a few minutes drive-time of San Gimignano's several public
parking areas, is Podere Sant'Elena - surrounded by vines and unspoiled
countryside. These converted farm buildings atop a hill with the
unique San Gimignano gracing the horizon, capture the very essence
of Tuscany. To add to the visitor's pleasure is a magnificent pool.
Parking is a two minute walk away within a secure adjacent area.
Breakfast is not one of their strong points, but its shortcomings are
more than offset by the facilities and splendid location. Within a few
minutes walk along a country road, past an old church, is a good
restaurant.

My wife and I stayed here for 4 nights at the start of June. Podere Sant'Elena is so quiet, scenic and peaceful. We enjoyed relaxing by the pool in the afternoons after our days of touring Tuscany. It was the perfect home base and distance from San Gimignano and the view of town was gorgeous, be it day or night. Our only complaint was that after a few nights we could tell the bed was a bit hard for our liking.

Irene who works there was always willing to offer suggestions on where to eat in town, where to park or even where to go for local shopping for food and other items. She was helpful, friendly and was always interested as to what we had done that day. It was a pleasure to talk to her when she was working and she made our stay that much more enjoyable.

We highly recommend staying here. Be sure to have the pastries with breakfast every morning, which come from the pastry store/bakery they also own in town.