Alessi Hotel Trattoria

The Alessi Hotel Trattoria is at via Castello 3, in the old centre of Desenzano del Garda, the narrow street that climbs from the old harbour towards the castle: it is two hundred metres from the lakeshore and the area is pedestrian, although guests with a booking are allowed to drive up to the entrance to unload their luggage. The free public car park in piazza Castello is a few steps away. The Alessi family has been receiving guests here since 1946 and the rooms are carved out of a maze of old fifteenth-century palaces, with an annexe in sixteenth-century buildings next to the hotel. It is a three-star hotel, as the sign at the entrance declares, and it is at the same time a hotel, a trattoria, a pizzeria, a restaurant, a wine bar and a wine shop.

The rooms look onto the old centre, onto via Castello itself or onto the inner courtyard, and they come at three levels. The Standard ones go for the essentials; the Comfort ones are larger and include the themed rooms of the annexe, named after Rome, Venice, Florence and Barcelona; the Junior Suites have a round or canopy bed and a large tub inside the room, and the booking portal also lists a Deluxe Suite with a hot tub. All of them have satellite television, free wifi and air conditioning. Breakfast is a buffet, with vegetarian and gluten-free options.

The table is the centre of the house. The main restaurant, Corte Pozzi, has an open-air room usable all year round; the trattoria offers roasts, lake and sea fish and antipasti from all over Italy; next to them are the pizzeria, the wine bar for aperitifs and the Bottiglieria Alessi, the family's wine shop. Gala evenings are held in the Sala Rossa. Among the other services the property lists a reception open twenty-four hours a day, room service, luggage storage, a room for bicycles, a paid airport shuttle and a solarium terrace over the rooftops, where you can have breakfast looking at the lake. There is no wellness area and no pool: neither the property website nor the portal listing names one, so anyone looking for a sauna and treatments should look elsewhere. The municipal tourist portal also credits the hotel with a private beach two kilometres away with a restaurant and pizzeria, a detail the house's own website does not repeat and which is worth having confirmed.

On age the two sources do not say the same thing, and it is as well to know before booking. The booking portal states that children aged at least twelve are welcome, and that is the figure reported in this entry. The official website publishes no threshold at all, and indeed still lists a babysitting service and children's meals among its services, while the enquiry form asks how many children under the age of twelve are staying. Anyone who cares about a house without small children should ask for written confirmation before confirming, because the two sources describe two different policies. The same warning applies to pets: the portal gives them as not allowed, the property website declares them allowed with a surcharge. The payment method indicated on the portal is cash.

It suits anyone who wants to sleep inside Desenzano, on foot from the harbour, the restaurants and the ferry, and anyone who puts the kitchen before the pool. It suits less anyone looking for a garden, a spa or the guarantee of an adults-only hotel with no room for doubt.