Borgo Egnazia

Ask when the next Festa del Borgo falls — the summer party dinner that takes over the piazza, with the whole village lit and a BorgoSpritz, the house signature, in hand. And book Vair's opening consultation for your first morning, not your last: the programme it sets needs days to do its work.

Arrival is engineered and it works: the shaded Corte, the house scent made only for this address, and an olive tree saved from the golf course standing as sculpture, pages of Italian literature rolled at the tips of its branches — birth, death and rebirth through the handing-on of culture. The borgo beyond behaves like a village because it is one: lanes to wander, a piazza that fills at night, houses in three formats from La Corte's hotel rooms through the Casette to the great Case with their plunge pools and fireplaces.

Days sort themselves by appetite. The sea gives two private beaches — Cala Masciola's rocks, watersports and fish kitchen, La Fonte's sand and shallow water — while the San Domenico links run along the coast two minutes away, and bikes go out with or without a guide through olive groves to the white towns. Children are not tolerated here but planned for: club, supervised activities, their own pool, their own gelato bar. The Local Advisers — all Puglian, all in white — are the system that makes it move; they hold the keys to the region as much as the resort.

Vair asks for a different verb than visiting. The consultation comes first; the programme follows — Roman baths at the spa's heart, psycho-aromatherapy from the Aroma Lab, music and movement from the staff's musicians and dancers, the taranta tradition underneath it all. Evenings answer with the Michelin-starred Due Camini, where Domingo Schingaro elevates orecchiette and lampascioni without breaking faith with them, with vegetarian La Calce, and with the Portico's Negroni on the house vermouth in its block of stamped ice. The claim in the name — Nowhere Else — is marketing that happens to be true.