Casa Clàt

The stable of this nineteenth-century palazzo on Viale Regina Margherita has gone over to wine. La Cantina is a barrel vault of bare brick and rough stone, with bottles racked to the ceiling behind a glass door and a long table down the middle for tastings. Studio Pilia turned the rest of the house into a hotel in 2022 and left its age showing: pale stone arches and dark beams in the lobby, and the carved street doors, painted a faded rose, folded back against the wall. Giorgio Casu, the artistic director, brought in Sardinian carvers and painters, and no two of the nine suites are alike. In one, white lines run like map contours across a black wall behind a bed that seems to float. The suites take their names from the sea, Corallo to Abissi, which in a house run by mussel farmers is keeping to the subject.

Recommended for a few days of Cagliari on foot. The Bastion of Saint Remy is about 300 metres from the door, and Poetto, eight kilometres of white sand, ten minutes by car. The restaurant, under old barrel vaults beside an open kitchen, cooks Sardinian seafood and mussels above all, so dinner can stay in. In the warm months the courtyard garden becomes a lounge bar and a terrace for dinner, with a small pool for the hour before. Families are welcome, with sofa beds for children in some suites and babysitting to book. At the top of the house is Il Torrino, a turret reached by lift and an iron stair, which looks all the way round over the city to the sea. It can be booked for a private dinner, as far from the old stable as the building goes.