Forestis

The first people to study this slope of the Plose were doctors, sent up in 1912 to test the air and the water, and they found enough to prescribe a tuberculosis sanatorium. The Austro-Hungarian Empire commissioned one from Otto Wagner. Then the war came, and the empire got as far as a house of stone and wood and a villa. The stone house still stands, 1,800m above Brixen, and since 2020 it has had company: three timber towers by Armin Sader, their tall vertical lines taken from the trees around them. Inside, the rooms keep to wood, stone and linen and leave the decorating to the window. In one bedroom the glass runs floor to ceiling and round a corner, and the jagged peaks of the Geisler group stand in it across a valley of trees gone gold.

Recommended for couples who want the Dolomites without anyone under 14 to share them, and in winter for skiers who would rather set off from the door. A quiet path runs through the forest from the hotel's own ski room to the chairlift and the Plose's 40km of groomed runs; Brixen, with its cathedral and cloisters, is 20 minutes' drive down. The heated pool runs from the spa out onto the hillside, facing the same peaks. The treatments are built round the region's four native trees. Dinner, once at least, should be Yera: eighteen seats in a room carved into the mountainside, where the cooking is done at a central fire and four open kitchens and the meal lasts four hours. After a day of looking at mountains, dinner is eaten inside one.