Lùme

Lùme has the whole of its house on Via Larga, from the street door to the roof: cielo-terra, in the Italian phrase, sky to earth. Prune, a Parisian, found it on a visit to Ortigia at a friend's invitation, and with two friends had Antonio Burgo, an architect from Siracusa, make six rooms of it, opening in 2021. The front is cream stone, with iron balconies on carved brackets; inside, the stone runs from Etna lava to Ragusa's pietra pece, and the rooms are filled with vintage pieces collected over the years, down to a branch of coral on a glass table. The Prima is meant as the nonna's room, if the nonna's taste ran to Visconti and Puccini, with a vaulted ceiling and two balconies over the street. The Quinta's glass doors open onto a winter garden of palms and cactus, and the Attico, at the top, has the sea in view and a kitchen of its own, its orange cupboards hung with plates painted with faces.

Recommended for couples who mean to eat in town and swim off the rocks, since Lùme has no restaurant and no pool. Breakfast is on the roof, and the mornings belong to Ronan, one of the three, who spent fifteen years at Hermès: coffee roasted near Etna, and fresh sheep's ricotta with Tarocco orange or kumquat jam. The Duomo is about five minutes away on foot, and the swim is about the same, at a rocky shore down a flight of steps. Back at the house there is a hammam, and the hotel's own therapist for a massage. In the evening guests are asked back up for an aperitivo, looking over the ochre roofs to the sea, and on a clear evening to Etna, the coffee's neighbour.