Cape of Senses

For two decades a meadow of old olive trees at Albisano, about 200 metres above Torri del Benaco, belonged to twenty entrepreneurs from Verona, who were waiting for a rezoning that never came. The Margesins, a hotel family from South Tyrol, built on it instead. The trees were in the way, so all 97 were dug up, parked at the edge of the site and replanted once the building was done; almost all of them survived it. Hugo and Alessia Demetz, father and daughter, curved the hotel along the slope behind a long pergola, gave it green roofs and turned every suite to the lake. In some the glass runs floor to ceiling and round the corner, which leaves the water and the mountains of the far shore two walls.

Recommended for grown-ups who want a serious spa with a lake in front of it, and the hotel means the grown-up part: nobody under fourteen. The spa runs to 2,000 square metres, and its treatments use wild Italian herbs picked by hand. Of the three pools, the infinity pool is the one to have, its edge lined up with the lake below. Yoga is on a platform among the olive trees. The hotel will arrange a sail on the lake, or an electric Vespa or Fiat 500 for dry land, and Torri del Benaco's harbour is ten minutes down the hill by car. Dinner is at Osteria La Pergola, or on the top floor at Al Tramonto, whose cooking guests praise. The name means at sunset, and with the whole hotel facing south-west across the water, it doubles as the booking time.