Villa Igiea, a Rocco Forte Hotel

Ignazio Florio bought the neo-Gothic villa a retired British admiral had built at the foot of Monte Pellegrino, meaning to make it a sanatorium for tuberculosis, and named it after Hygieia, the Greek figure of health. His investors wanted a grand hotel, and got one before Ernesto Basile had finished the building. It opened in 1900. Edward VII came in 1907, Claudia Cardinale while filming The Leopard, and health has had to make do with the spa, where the treatments use stones from Etna and salt from Trapani. From the water the palazzo is ochre stone and crenellated towers over a private marina, with pines and palms stepping down the rock to the boats. Inside, Ettore De Maria Bergler painted the Sala Basile with women among curling flowers, and the restoration took the hotel's colours from his walls: caramel grasscloth and blue ceramic lamps in the bedrooms.

Recommended for couples who want Palermo close at hand and a garden to retreat to, and for families with older children: there are Family Suites and babysitting on a day's notice, but no kids club. Mondello's sand is ten minutes away by car, and so is the Teatro Massimo, the other Palermo landmark with Basile's name on it. The pool has the Alicetta bar beside it and a ruined colonnade between the loungers and the sea, which is more history than most pools can offer. Dinner is Fulvio Pierangelini's, at Florio, in what was the Florio family's own dining hall. Afterwards the Igiea Terrazza Bar, frescoed by Gino Morici in the 1950s, opens onto a terrace over the gulf: sea air, which is what Ignazio Florio bought the place for.