My Favorite Hotels in Italy
The ones I haven’t told you about yet.
As often as we write about Italy — and I know, it’s a lot, but the country just keeps on giving — I haven’t yet shared many of my favorite places with you. So let’s fix that. Of this list of half a dozen hotels, three are new-ish and buzzy places I’ve visited in the course of being a travel editor and three are under-the-radar spots I’ve discovered over decades of traveling around the country. All are places I dream of returning to.
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Borgo Santo Pietro
Easily one of the dreamiest places I’ve ever been. “Borgo,” the Italian term for a small village, is a full-on, unrivaled experience. In the few days I was here, I picked crates of grapes during a harvest festival. I learned the proper way to prune and encourage grape vines. I visited the fields that grew the herbs, flowers, and botanicals that infuse the Seed to Skin products they produce and use in their massages and facials. (Seed to Skin is sold at beauty emporia like Liberty of London, but it was extra to feel them at the source.) I hand-rolled ravioli at the cooking school. I arranged a bouquet in the flower shed. I milked sheep (with their consent. Well, sort of). I befriended the chickens that live in the brightly colored chicken coops. I failed to befriend the baby llamas and their mamas. I had dinner in a treehouse and finished my meal with superb sheep’s milk cheese (made from, yes, those same sheep). I saw a resident peacock parade past me as I did a private yoga class on the lawn. (“You call that a peacock pose?” it all but taunted me.) I swam naked under a full moon in the private pool outside the living room of my suite. I felt — and was — spoiled rotten every moment I spent here, which is how everyone who splurges on a visit will feel. If I ever win the lottery (fingers crossed), I’m moving in.
Bulgari Hotel Roma
Here’s another blow-the-bank option for the next time you win the lottery. I almost didn’t want to like Bulgari Hotel Roma. I was expecting it would be too blingy and ostentatious. Well, so much for me and my prejudices: This hotel is elegance personified. Spanning a city block across from the Mausoleum of Augustus and the Ara Pacis, the 1930s structure was built to house Italy’s social security agency, and that many original architectural features have been preserved, notably a winding marble staircase, only adds to the jewel-like quality throughout. The subterranean spa is big enough to hold a 20-meter pool (more mosaics, more marble); the expansive, plant-filled rooftop terrace feels like a garden where you can touch the clouds. The top-notch restaurants cater to picky palates and appetites in shifting time zones without causing a fuss, and the rooms feel like a cashmere blanket that came to life. (If you do win the lottery, please bring me with you.)
Borgo dei Conti
The Hospitality Experience, the folks behind The Place Firenze (the best hotel in Florence), opened Borgo dei Conti in the Umbrian countryside on the border with Tuscany last year. Yes, it’s another borgo, this one with neo-Gothic buildings, a baroque chapel, and an outdoor cinema. More nice features I was happy to find: The fine dining restaurant is in the former lemon tree grove. The spa is as modern (salt room, sensory deprivation area, biosauna) as the frescoes and fireplaces are original. The surrounding property — 15 hectares of old growth trees — makes for primo forest bathing, with special paths themed around earth, fire, air, water, and energy for pursuits both sporty and spiritual.
Read on for my under-the-radar spots in the countryside…