Terme di Saturnia Natural Spa & Golf Resort

The course is the work of Ronald Fream of Golf Plan: 18 holes, par 72, 6,316 metres spread across 70 hectares of Maremma hills, with ponds, streams and big bunkers carved into the fairways. From the back tees it is a championship test; beginners, seniors and under-12s have forward tees of their own.

In 2014 the club earned GEO certification from the Golf Environment Organization and the Italian Golf Federation's 'Impegnati nel Verde' award. Drainage feeds into the lakes to recycle rainwater, the turf grasses use 30% less water, and no insecticides or pesticides are used.

The practice ground has 43 bays: 34 open and 9 covered, with front and side mirrors, three of them heated in winter. The teaching pros are qualified through the federal PGA school, and the club runs Golf Clinics. The club house is inside the resort, with the golf office at hotel reception.

The Golf Inclusive offer needs a minimum of two nights and includes breakfast, one 18-hole green fee a day per player, 50% off a second guest's green fee, range use, a couples' cryotherapy session and a discount on Swing&SPA treatments.

Gaspero Ciacci built the hotel, which opened in August 1919, as the Grosseto newspaper 'l'Ombrone' announced at the time; his family had bought the baths in 1865. The estate now covers 120 hectares with 124 rooms and suites, and is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World.

Rooms start at 18-25 m² and go up to the Grand Suite, with two bathrooms and four French windows over the spring. The Garden Junior Suites, all on the ground floor, each have a private thermal-water tub in a private garden. Pets are looked after through the VIPets programme: a reserved spot on the spring lawn, access to the restaurants and walks along the golf-course paths.

Rain falls on Monte Amiata and travels underground for about 40 years, through Pleistocene and Mesozoic rock, before surfacing in the natural pool at the heart of the resort at 37.5°C, carrying 14.5 mg/l of hydrogen sulphide. From there it feeds the thermal park and runs on through the fields to the Cascate del Mulino.

Hotel guests can use the spring, the hydromassage pools, the Roman Bath with sauna and steam room, the relaxation rooms of the Casale and the 20,000 m² thermal park, which is open to children too. The spa adds face and body treatments, a Medical SPA and naturopathy programmes.

For dinner, the 1919 restaurant beside the spring has carried the hotel's opening year since 2019; the executive chef is Salvatore Quarto. Out among the course's hills, a farmhouse holds the La Stellata trattoria.

• Bathing under the stars: every Friday evening the spring stays open until midnight.
• Saturn's thunderbolt: legend says the god, tired of men's wars, hurled a thunderbolt at the earth and hot sulphurous water gushed from the crater.
• A mill in 1188: a papal bull of Clement III, kept in the State Archive of Siena, mentions a 'molendinum de balneo', evidence that a bathing complex already existed here in the Middle Ages.
• A heritage brand: Italy's Ministry of Economic Development has recognised Terme di Saturnia as a 'Marchio Storico di Interesse Nazionale', a historic brand of national interest.