Lefay Resort & Spa Lago di Garda

Franciscan friars brought citrus to Gargnano in the thirteenth century, and by the early 1850s the town was growing more than eight million lemons a year in limonaie: tall stone pillars joined by chestnut beams, closed in with planks and windowed walls for the winter. Lefay was built on the hillside above in 2008, among eleven hectares of woodland and olive and lemon groves, and called its everyday restaurant La Limonaia, which is the least it could do. A suite here is cream and white, with full-length windows behind sheer curtains; outside, a timber balcony rail hung with vines, and the olive trees dropping away to the lake. The infinity pool ends at the water, or seems to: what lies between them is the hillside.

Recommended for families who want a spa holiday, and for couples who would like the spa without small children in it, since the age limits do the sorting. The kids' club is free for three- to eleven-year-olds; Gramen, which serves tasting menus themed on water and land, takes ten and over; the spa takes sixteen and over, and is laid out in zones for water, fire, earth and air, with six kinds of sauna and an indoor thalassotherapy pool. The resort keeps its own boats, a Frauscher speedboat among them, and arranges e-bike rides and hikes into the Alto Garda park. The shuttle into Gargnano is included, from ten until seven. On foot, the harbour at Riva Grande is thirteen minutes away, and Limonaia la Malora eleven: one of the last lemon houses on Lake Garda still run strictly the traditional way, by Giuseppe Gandossi and his son Fabio, growing lemons the way Gargnano grew its eight million.