Faro Capo Spartivento

Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy ordered a lighthouse on the bare rock at Capo Spartivento, and it has since outlasted American aircraft in the Second World War and then its own keepers, whose families lived here until the light was automated in the 1980s. The light carries on regardless. Outside, the building is red, with cream quoins and CAPO-SPARTIVENTO lettered under the parapet. Inside, one sitting room sets a white buttoned sofa on a carved frame opposite an old wooden chest that holds up the television, all under a vault of bare brick, and nobody has tried to make the centuries agree. Upstairs, the terrace runs round the foot of the tower, with the lens just overhead and sea and hills in every direction.

Recommended for couples who want the end of the island to themselves, and for families who can take one of the four suites in the Residenza Semaforisti, the old barracks, each with an extra double bedroom. Private cars stop outside the nature reserve, so the hotel's shuttle does the last stretch, and from there the walking starts at the door: eleven minutes along the headland path to the cove at Cala Cipolla, or deeper into the reserve with a guide or on horseback. There is no menu. A private chef cooks from the day's catch and the island's produce, and dinner can be laid in one of eight glass gazebos in the garden, near an olive tree centuries old. Underground there is a cinema, the one room in a lighthouse built to keep the light out.