ABINEA Dolomiti Romantic SPA Hotel

The ABINEA Dolomiti Romantic SPA Hotel is at via Panider 21/1, in Castelrotto, one hundred and fifty metres from the old centre of the village, at about one thousand and sixty metres above sea level, in the basin that rises towards the Alpe di Siusi and the Sciliar. It is a house belonging to the Perathoner family, a design hotel built with local materials, and the name comes from old Ladin: to seek, to find, the birth of the Dolomites.

Families come in, under fourteens do not go in the sauna

The property has a page given over to family holidays and pays attention to young guests, so it is not a hotel that bars children. On the wellness area, however, it is unambiguous. In the presentation of the house the website lists among the features of the wellness centre the item Adults Only, specifying that at least part of the wellness area is reserved for adults. The day spa page gives the exact age: children under 14 are not allowed into the Sauna & Relax area or the Vitarium Alpinum. Anyone arriving with a twelve or thirteen year old therefore knows in advance that they will not go into the sauna, but will go in the pool.

What there is in the reserved area

The Sauna & Relax area includes a quiet zone, a relaxation room with hay beds, a salt grotto with a whirlpool tub, a cold room with a crushed-ice fountain, a Kneipp circuit, a Dolomite rock crystal steam bath, a pine sauna and a hay bio sauna. It opens at 12.00 and closes at 20.00, with an earlier opening at 11.00 on Saturdays, Sundays and on days of bad weather.

The Vitarium Alpinum is the part the house considers its signature: a massage room, a relaxation room with beds, bubbling foot baths, a couple's hay bath inside a reconstructed barn, the water beds of the four elements, a waterfall with a rain shower, a sauna in stone and spruce, an infrared cabin and a drinking-water fountain. Here too the hours are from 12.00 to 20.00. On the fifth-floor terrace there is then a panoramic sauna, open from 13.00 to 20.00.

The water and the rest

The indoor Dolomiti Pool, with whirlpool loungers, is open from 7.30 to 20.00 and has no age limit: it is the place where a family belongs. Above, on the panoramic terrace, there are the Sky Pool heated to thirty-four degrees with a built-in whirlpool tub and a second stretch of water at thirty-five degrees facing the village and the peaks. The wellness centre covers two thousand square metres in all and includes the salt-water pool grotto, the solarium, the cabins for massages and beauty treatments, the winter garden with relaxation loungers and a Private Spa booked for two.

Those not staying in the house may use the day spa with a telephone booking; entry to the pool alone, in the morning between 8.00 and 12.00, costs ten euros for adults and five for children up to thirteen.

It suits anyone who wants to stay in the village, with the shops and the buses a step away, and at the same time have a sauna that youngsters do not enter. It suits less anyone looking for the silence of an isolated property: in high season Castelrotto is one of the most visited villages in South Tyrol.