Grotta Giusti Resort Golf & Spa

We’re often partial to cutting-edge design around here, it’s true — but a hotel like this one, in the postcard-perfect Italian countryside, proves that the classics never go out of style. Here, in inland northern Tuscany, roughly between Florence and Lucca, stands the century-and-a-half-old Grotta Giusti Natural Spa Resort, a 64-room luxury retreat that’s straight from the old school.

The rooms and suites have just enough modern technology to get by; you won’t be mistaking these pastel-toned interiors for “design hotel” rooms anytime soon. This is a hotel from the days before there was such a thing as a design statement — before a spa needed a “concept” beyond “soak in some hot baths for a while.”

In fact you’ll find little of the modern boutique about the place at all, aside from the modest size; what you will find is old-fashioned luxury, classic Tuscan-villa atmosphere, and a spa that’s got as much in common with Roman baths as with modern medicine — holistic medicine and beauty treatments abound, but it’s the simpler pleasures, like the cavernous underground grotto, or the 750-square-meter outdoor thermal pool (complete with waterfall and underwater hydromassage), that really shine.