Hill Towns for a Slow Holiday

A slow holiday is measured not in days but in journeys: fewer kilometres, more hours in the same place. Golf suits it well, because a well-chosen course lies a few minutes from the hotel and the rest of the day can be spent on foot in a historic centre. Here are five villages where this really works.

Five villages with golf at a glance

In each of these five villages or historic towns, the hotel stands in the centre or on the estate of a medieval core, and a golf course is within reach, according to the hotel itself or the club.

Asolo: the town of a hundred horizons

Asolo stands at 190 metres above sea level, in the province of Treviso, and belongs to I Borghi più belli d'Italia (Italy's Most Beautiful Villages). According to the association it has been inhabited without interruption since the Bronze Age; the medieval Rocca rises to 310 metres, the civic tower offers a 360-degree view and the Duomo holds works by Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo da Ponte. Giosuè Carducci called it “the town of a hundred horizons”; the actress Eleonora Duse and the traveller Freya Stark lived here, and Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, held her Renaissance court here.

Villa Cipriani is the house where the English poet Robert Browning settled in 1889. It has 28 rooms, a garden that changes colour with the months and an American Bar serving a white-peach Bellini. The hotel has no course of its own, but names the Asolo Golf Club as the nearest, about 12 km away: 27 holes on three par-36 nines (Red, Yellow and Green) and, since 2003, Italy's first federation Academy.

Castiglion del Bosco: a village inside an estate

Here the village is the hotel. The Castiglion del Bosco estate covers 5,000 acres around a medieval core: the castle dates from about 1100 and the stone walls were raised in the early 13th century by the Cacciaconti of Trequanda. The hotel has 42 suites in the village and 11 villas created from 17th- and 18th-century farmhouses, set against the Val d'Orcia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004.

The golf is a special case: The Club at Castiglion del Bosco is, according to the club, the only private golf club in Italy. Hotel guests can play the 18 holes designed by Tom Weiskopf by booking in advance; anyone not staying there must ask for admission. After the eighteenth comes the “Brunello Hole”, a par 3 played for a magnum of Brunello.

Castiglione di Sicilia: on Etna, between snow and vineyards

Castiglione di Sicilia is also among I Borghi più belli d'Italia. Its 12th-century Norman-Swabian castle is linked to the name of Roger of Lauria; according to the documents cited by the association, the name “Castrileonis” appears as early as 1092. The municipal territory climbs from 60 metres to 3,348 on Etna, and among chestnut groves, hazelnut orchards and vineyards the Etna DOC wines are made.

In Castiglione di Sicilia the Picciolo Etna Golf Resort has 100 rooms and a course on its doorstep, the Picciolo Golf Club: 18 holes, par 72, 5,870 metres, opened in 1989, with lava-stone hazards. The 2026 green fee is 110 euros, 90 for resort guests. The coast is about 25 minutes away by car and the hotel has no beach of its own: for the sea there are arrangements with a number of beach clubs.

Fiè allo Sciliar: a 13th-century tower

The Hotel Turm occupies three houses and several towers in the centre of Fiè; the old tower dates from the 13th century and the Turmstube is more than 800 years old. In its rooms the family has gathered about 2,000 works of oils, watercolours and lithographs; a genuine Picasso hangs in the bar. In the spa you will find Fiè's hay bath, a local tradition codified in the early twentieth century by the physician Josef Clara.

For golf the hotel names Golf St. Vigil Seis, on the Alpe di Siusi plateau at 850 metres: 18 holes, par 69, open from April to November, five minutes away, according to the hotel. Guests get a 20% discount on the green fee and guaranteed tee times. The hole to remember is the 15th, a par 3 that the club describes as one of the steepest in Europe in terms of drop.

Garlenda: the castle of the sundial

In Garlenda, in the Val Lerrone, La Meridiana takes its name from the nearby Castello del Carretto, known as “of the sundial”. It is a Provençal-style house opened in 1978 by Luisa Berto de Segre, which joined Relais & Châteaux the same year, with 26 rooms and suites. The Golf Club Garlenda, an 18-hole par 72 dating from 1964 in the Val Lerrone, can be reached on foot from the hotel; for guests the green fee is 60 euros on weekdays and 80 at weekends.

The hotel will also book a sunshade at a beach club in Alassio.

When to go

It depends on the course and the hotel. St. Vigil Seis plays from April to November; at Picciolo the hours run from 8 am to 5 pm in winter and from 8 am to 7 pm in summer; Villa Cipriani keeps its restaurant open every day of the year, with the garden passing from April's tulips to May's roses and September's Osmanthus fragrans.

Curiosities

• Two film sets. Asolo and its surroundings appear, according to the hotel, in Ripley's Game by Liliana Cavani and in Sognando l'Africa (Dreaming of Africa).
• A late attribution. In the church of San Michele Arcangelo, about a mile from the village of Castiglion del Bosco, Pietro Lorenzetti painted an Annunciation in 1345; it stayed under the plaster until 1876 and was recognised by Cesare Brandi in 1930.
• A Latin name. For Asolo the association recalls the ancient name Acelum, from the Indo-European for “sharp place”.