Prati Palai

Prati Palai's pool was coloured after a long series of trials, until it matched Lake Garda, which lies below it beyond the olive trees and the roofs of Bardolino. Neither is heated. The pool is a plain basin edged in white local stone, reached by an earth path through the olives, and the 18 hectares around it were once two farm plots that served a larger villa. The farmhouse, La Colombarola, dates from about 1500 and wears a row of brick crenellations along its ridge. Studio Athesis restored it in 2014 with reclaimed planks for floors and lime paint tinted with earth pigments, and under the beams the colours go pastel: a curved green wall climbing to a mezzanine, ovals cut into it for shelves, and in an attic room a red clawfoot bath on bare boards beneath a skylight. Suite 9, at the top, has a round window framed on Punta San Vigilio.

Recommended for couples who would rather see Garda from above than from the promenade, and do not mind driving down for dinner: there is no restaurant, no one under sixteen is taken, and the house closes from early November to the end of March. Breakfast is the meal it does, from eight to eleven at one long wooden table or out on the bank above the dining room, with the estate's own olive oil. After that the estate has tennis and bocce courts and trails to fill the day, and mountain bikes for the vineyard roads down to Bardolino, two minutes by car; the lake beach at Lido Mirabello is six. By the pool is a fridge of drinks to help yourself from, and the limoncello in it is made from the estate's citrus, which is as close as the house comes to a bar.