Principe Forte dei Marmi

The glassy, angular, decidedly modern Principe Fortei dei Marmi is Tuscan Riviera to the utmost, as unapologetically glamorous as a hotel can be without slipping over into ostentation. It’s not so much a beach hotel as a riviera hotel, more butler-served day-bed cabanas than flip-flops and sandy toes. It’s also a very pleasant reminder that all those sea breezes wafting toward the vineyards and villas to the east had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere turns out to be a stunning rocky coast with a scene all its own — stylish seaside restaurants and late-night dance parties sharing the land’s end with laid-back beach strollers and Florentines escaping from the city.

But back to the hotel. Its twenty-eight rooms check all the right boxes for modern luxury; they’re sunny and spacious with parquet floors and oversized windows, fitted with designer Italian furniture and glass-walled bathrooms (with privacy curtains), wired with Bose sound systems, soundproofed against your neighbors’ Bose sound systems, hung with enormous LCD TVs, lit to your mood in high-tech fashion, and instead of tired mini-fridges there are in-room wine fridges that are stocked with a well curated bottle selection.

Despite the hotel’s size, the rooms are really only the beginning. At the spa, you can experience all the greatest hits of international steaming, cooling and cleaning in a single “wellbeing circuit,” consisting of a Finnish sauna, cold lavender mist shower, Turkish hamam, Russian banya, “cold mint storm,” “ice cascade,” and finally a well-earned rest in the tea room. If that sounds a bit intense, there are a couple of gorgeous pools as well, one indoor and one outdoor, not to mention the hotel’s full-service private beach club and, for a little more distance from your fellow guests, its own luxury yacht.

The highlights, though, are the bars and restaurants, sprinkled about the beach and pools and terraces and even the roof. Some have sea views, others are set beneath the backdrop of the Apuan Alps (full of Cararra marble, for what that’s worth), and some have vantage points where you can admire both. In short, there’s mountains and greenery and sea-breezes galore, but it’s hardly back-to-basics.

How to get there:
Galileo Galilei Airport (Pisa) is 30 minutes away by car. Amerigo Vespucci Airport (Florence) is 60 minutes away by car. Querceta train station is approximately 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from the hotel.