Maslina Resort

The reception desk at Maslina Resort is a rough-hewn block of white stone weighing twelve tonnes, and the hotel was built around it, which settles the question of where it goes. Beyond it, 53 rooms, suites and villas are spread through two hectares of pine forest on Maslinica Bay, just along the coast from Stari Grad. The materials are Brač stone, terracotta, brushed brass and local wood. In the rooms that means pale timber and amber glass lamps slung in rope, with floor-to-ceiling glass screened by tall slats and the pines and the bay showing between them.

Recommended for families who would like the children busy and the parents left alone for a few hours, and for couples, who can take a Pool Suite with a heated plunge pool of its own. The kids' club takes under-12s from nine to five in the summer months, the family suites have two bedrooms or three, and babysitting can be booked on 48 hours' notice. Terra, the restaurant, cooks from the island's olive groves and vineyards, with its rosemary and sage, and brings lunch out to the sunbeds by the pool. The spa, Pharomatiq, joins Pharos, Stari Grad's ancient name, to the island's aromatic herbs, and then gets on with the facials.

A private speedboat brings guests from Split Airport in about an hour, and Stari Grad's ferry port is five minutes' walk from the hotel. The town itself, which the hotel puts at 2,400 years old, is twenty minutes on foot along the coast. For anyone with legs left after the spa, there is St Nicholas Peak to cycle up, and Italy to look at from the top.