The Times Spa Guide: Borgo Egnazia, Puglia, Italy
In a nutshell The ultimate proof that Puglia has arrived as a luxury destination is this paradigm of stealth wealth and warm minimalism, conjured out of creamy tufo stone. The five-star Borgo Egnazia feels as if it’s been around for centuries, but in fact was built in 2010. The 63 hotel rooms and spa are in the main building, known as La Corte, the design of which is based on a masseria, the posher variety of Italian farmhouse. This is where you’ll find the Vair Spa, a soothing underground sanctuary where the usual line-up of beauticians, massage therapists and personal trainers is complemented by musicians, dancers and artists. In the grounds is the borgo, or village, with its own square and clock tower, plus 92 casetta offering self-catering facilities. There are four — yes, four — swimming pools, one of which is indoors. A short buggy ride across the golf course is a private beach club — think rocky, not sandy, but chic. The diverse attractions of the region, from the hobbit-house trulli of Alberobello to the baroque splendours of Lecce, the so-called Florence of the south (it’s fabulous), by way of the hilltop Ostuni, aka the White City, and the yet more vertiginous fishing village of Polignano a Mare, are all close by.
What’s it like The Vair Spa is in the basement of the main building, and is as tasteful as the rest of the establishment, all stone arches and mortars full of lemons. The showpiece is the so-called Roman Baths, with assorted plunge pools of different temperatures, a biosauna, and enough flickering candles to light an amphitheatre after dark. Here you can be scrubbed and bathed by your own 21st-century toga-wearing handmaiden, should you desire. The airy and large indoor pool and gym are adjacent to the main spa area. The treatments They range from the straight down the line excellent to the charmingly idiosyncratic. In the former camp was one of the best deep massages of my life, not just in terms of the manual manipulation, but also the insights the therapist had about assorted issues in my body and how best to resolve them (€140 for 50 minutes; ask for Thomas). Then there was the excellent facial concocted out of herbs and fruits harvested from the hotel gardens — lavender and rosemary, apricot and cherry oil — which left my face lifted, relaxed and, as you might imagine, preternaturally fragrant (€125 for 50 minutes). Which brings me on to a treatment in the latter camp, an “Addur” olfactory session with an aromatherapist-cum-psychotherapist (yup), who uses your reaction to a range of scents to present insights into where you are in your life today. Weird, yet fascinating (€180 for 60 minutes). But that’s nothing compared with a session called “A Strignul-Puglian-style singing and dancing” with a local actor-cum-musician (€220 for 90 minutes). At the beginning my mother and I had never felt more mortifyingly English. By the end we felt positively Puglian.
Who goes? There are lots of Brits and lots of Italians. During school holidays it feels very much like a family affair, but the child-focused activity is in the borgo, and it’s easy for those without children to find peace and quiet. Besides, the guests, whatever their age, tend to be as quietly tasteful as the milieu. This is the anti-Benidorm, a world of pressed linens and lowered voices. Going wild here means not re-pressing one’s trousers for dinner. What are the rooms like? An accident waiting to happen, given that this is the land of extremely good tomato sauce — more than half Italy’s processing tomatoes come from this region — and the rooms are 50 shades of white. Still, first world problems. My advice: don’t order room service, so you can wallow in the tastefulness of it all without concern. In the main building the masseria theme continues into the bedrooms: here a glass case full of bales of twine, there a wall hung with lanterns or some framed antique ledger books. But there’s nothing olde-worlde about the topnotch bed linens and the spacious tufo-lined bathrooms. There are similar rooms within the borgo, as well as options with a separate living room, plus the two-storey casetta, which have one or two bedrooms and a kitchenette that somehow manages to look classy — unprecedented, surely? Elsewhere on the estate there are six villas of epic proportions, for those with oligarch-level means, including — on at least one occasion — Madonna.
The Due Camini restaurant
What is the food like? Is it good news or bad that this is a hotel that takes its restaurants as seriously as its spa? You decide, but it would be hard to lose weight here. The Due Camini restaurant may have been designed, we were told, to look like the home of a nonna or grandmother (think crocheted tablecloths and assorted idiosyncratic mise en scènes), but the food is as professional as its two-Michelin-star reputation would suggest (goat’s cheese-stuffed ravioli with langoustines and verbena, anyone?). Another endearing touch of the quixotic — something of a signature here I am coming to realise — is when you are given nine dessert flavours to choose from (chocolate, pomegranate, etc), and a pudding is then made to measure. There’s simpler classic southern Italian fare on offer at La Frasca in the borgo, and, at the beach club (open from May to September, as is the children’s restaurant). During the warmer months there are also themed dinners. The lowdown Anna Murphy was a guest of Healing Holidays (healingholidays.co.uk), which offers four nights’ B&B from £729pp, including flights to Bari and transfers. A Na Maele spa detox programme, which includes six different treatments, starts at £1,739. For further information visit borgoegnazia.com or vairspa.it
