Pack your bags

Villa Igiea, Palermo, Sicily, Italy

I’M off to Palermo for a few days,’ I tell an Italian chum. ‘Ah, staying at the Villa Igiea?’ She asks, such is its allure. A sandstone palazzo on the Tyrrhenian sea front, close to the docks, it’s a verdant oasis in an admittedly grim neighbourhood. The incongruous location is close to the prison that houses a swathe of the Cosa Nostra. Around these streets, from the 1970s through to the mid 1990s, shots rang and bombs blasted.

Those were the hotel’s lost years, tired and forlorn. It wasn’t always thus. Built in 1899, it attracted the Belle Epoque’s aristocracy, followed by Hollywood icons Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren and Kirk Douglas.

Just as blossoming Palermo has put the mafia behind it, Rocco Forte has lovingly restored the Villa Igiea to its former glory. Using the palazzo’s untouched Art Nouveau Sala Basile, adorned with frescos in sage, blue and yellow, as a colour chart, these restrained, but sumptuous shades are now found throughout the 100 rooms. Vibrant majolica tiles make the bathrooms highly Insta-worthy.

The spirit of Garbo and friends can be felt in the light-filled Florio restaurant, an elegantly revitalised time capsule with lush plants, rattan furnishings, floral upholstery and antique mirrors, and in the vaulted Igiea Terrazza bar, a cosy space with 1950s murals, wrought-iron chandeliers, and one of the most erudite cocktail menus this imbiber has sampled, drinks served with buxom, juicy green olives.

The Villa Igiea manages to be fresh and unstuffy, yet is infused with the pioneering luxury of an era when, on learning you were in town, everyone knew where you’d be staying. Adam Hay-nicholls

From €460 (about £385) per night (www. roccofortehotels.com)