Sextantio

To give it its full name, it’s Sextantio Albergo Diffuso; roughly speaking, the Sextantio Distributed Hotel. Which sounds a bit futuristic in English, but is in fact nothing of the sort — it’s a sixteenth-century village, the Abbruzzese mountain village of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, complete with villagers as residents, and packed in between them, distributed amongst the various houses and buildings of the village, are some 29 contemporary boutique hotel rooms.

It’s the sort of thing that could come off gimmicky in less confident hands, but here it feels as natural as anything — after a night you’ll wonder why aren’t there more distributed hotels? The renovation is as sensitive as it gets, and while the atmosphere is strictly classic, the comforts are modern — radiant underfloor heating, high speed internet, the whole 21st-century package. Bathrooms feature fittings by Philippe Starck, which is nice, given the state of plumbing in the 16th century, and the occasional massive egg-shaped bathtub is a very welcome innovation. There’s a little cantina where you can take breakfast or a digestif, and a restaurant that serves extremely authentic Abbruzzese cuisine.

The idea here is to live as the locals do, though perhaps with slightly better furniture. You’re not isolated in some hotel bar or stuck at the end of some air-conditioned corridor. At Sextantio, two hours’ drive from Rome airport, you’ve got one foot in the Italian countryside already — this is no tame Tuscan landscape, by the way, but undiscovered and undeveloped Abbruzzo — with the wine country, the stunning national park, and all manner of historical sites close at hand.