Seven Rooms Villadorata

In 1774 Corrado Nicolaci was made Prince of Villadorata, and his palace on Via Cavour became the showcase for a family with a new title to show off. Since 2009 part of it has been a hotel of ten rooms, each named after one of the mythical winds that blow over the region. The eighteenth-century frescoes are still on the ceilings: gilt-edged coffers over a sage-green bedroom, blue and red ribbons round a medallion in a sitting room. Below them a stone bust in a full periwig watches from the chest of drawers, and the crystal chandelier hangs inside a drum of smoked glass, as if to keep it from upstaging the ceiling. Book a Junior Suite for the high ceilings and a balcony over the town. The Prince Suite runs to 150 square metres, as a prince's should.

Recommended for couples who would take a Baroque balcony over a sunbed: there is no pool, and nobody under fourteen stays. The cathedral and the town hall are a few steps away; the sea is a drive, about 25 minutes to the sand at Calamosche in the Vendicari reserve. Breakfast comes up to the room, and guests write of eating it on the balcony, and of bathrooms on the palace's scale: one has marble walls and two pairs of French doors onto a street of honey-coloured stone. At seven the terrace opens for aperitifs, by reservation, and looks past the dome of San Nicolò to Vendicari's tuna fishery and Portopalo di Capo Passero, where the Ionian meets the Mediterranean. Dinner is at Osteria Villadorata, in the palace's old wine cellars, which have at least stayed in the trade.