Umbria’s Hotel Castello di Reschio in Italy is the best spa resort for those needing to get their brain cells back and firing
Apparently, men think about the Roman Empire several times a week (well, according to one popular TikTok meme last year). They – and women too, of course – will have plenty to ponder when wallowing in the Hotel Castello di Reschio’s Roman-inspired The Bathhouse spa, not least just how well-pampered Julius Caesar and his friends were. Lurking in the depths of the castle’s old wine cellars, The Bathhouse is so big on the antiquity stuff, you half imagine Mary Beard to pop up with stories and stats. Unique features such as a voluminous salt-water Roman bath and a natural tepidarium (a warm bath) dug into the earth will transport spa-goers to 324AD (or thereabouts), while the ancient ambience of stony subterranean cellar is enhanced by flickering candles and a lovely open-fire.
The treatments at The Bathhouse are all bespoke, tailored towards customers’ needs. Locally-foraged ingredients such as wild camomile flowers and honey are used in treatments, before being pummelled out using infusions such as St John’s Wort (collected every summer solstice from nearby meadows).
Other than that, it’s all about relaxation: luxuriating in the circular bath at the bottom of a three-storey tower, getting steamy in the hammam, or sitting on marble benches gazing at up at the millennia-old stone walls. There are also two ‘conversation baths’, in which you can sit in and bounce your newly created ideas around – the sort of thing you’d expect in Top 7’s best spa for a creativity reboot.
When you’re not bathing like an emperor, Hotel Castello di Reschio offers a phalanx of activities: horse-riding, foraging workshops, Italian cookery lessons, even picking up skills usually taught in monasteries such as calligraphy or paper marbling.
What to take Good walking boots. There’s plenty of hiking to be done on the Castello di Reschio’s 3,700-acre estate and nearby hills and Assisi and Gubbio are only a short drive away and worth a stroll around.
Switch off and read . . .
Author Umberto Eco believed that Umbria was the centre of the universe and his medieval murder mystery, Name of the Rose, is set in an Italian monastery – it’s hard to imagine a more perfect book for reading at Castello di Reschio.