Palazzo Albricci Peregrini

In 2016 Maximiliano Galli, a civil engineer, and his daughter Ester, an architecture student, redesigned the family's 15th-century palazzo inside Como's medieval walls, and they left its age where it could be seen. Rough timber posts rise either side of one bed, and a carved wooden head keeps watch from an old trunk at its foot. In another room the bath has come out into the bedroom, onto terrazzo bordered with a Greek key, under a painted ceiling, which makes a strong case against getting dressed. The family call each room a chest of small treasures from years of travel, and at one window onto the courtyard two terracotta warriors stand guard over the lot. The dining room is sunk inside the original stone walls, patched with old brick, a candle burning in an alcove.

Recommended for couples who would rather sleep in the old town than on the shore, and who rank breakfast above a pool, which is as well: there is none. Breakfast is Lidia's. Maximiliano's wife put it together from the best touches of the famous hotels she has stayed in, and the hotel says it is known all over the world. Guests' reviews, more modestly, call it generous and inventive. The lake is something to go out to, by Riva or by seaplane, the route planned with the captain or the pilot, and the port and the hangar are, in the hotel's phrase, a heartbeat away. Back for the aperitivo at six, then dinner for guests only, cooked from whatever the chef found at market that day. Or a cooking class with the chef, three or four hours with dinner at the end, so the homework gets eaten.