Tuscany

Tuscany built its hotel reputation on conversions: villas that once belonged to Florentine families, borghi with a chapel and a bread oven, farmhouses whose owners still make the wine and the oil. The best addresses here are rarely tall. They sit on a ridge above the Val d'Orcia or the Chianti hills, with a pool cut into the terrace and a kitchen that cooks from what grows below the window. Travellers come for quiet, for space, for families who need a lawn rather than a lobby, and for dogs, which most country houses accept without fuss.

The season runs from April to October, with May, June and late September the kindest months. Insiders skip Florence in August, book the Maremma coast for sea and stone pine forests, and choose houses with their own restaurant, because the nearest trattoria may be a twenty minute drive along a white road.