Antica Dimora dell'Ortolano

The Antica Dimora dell'Ortolano is at via Castello 57/59, inside the walls of Castellaro Lagusello, the walled hamlet of the municipality of Monzambano in the province of Mantua, on the morainic hills south of Lake Garda. The village has been on the list of the most beautiful villages in Italy since 2002: you enter through a gate crowned by the Clock Tower, pass the old Romanesque parish church that became the baroque church of San Nicola and arrive at the little square facing the heart-shaped lake, today a nature reserve. The house is there, opposite the nineteenth-century Villa Arrighi, and it is the oldest in the village: a thirteenth-century noble residence that a conservative restoration has kept in its original form. Lake Garda is a few minutes away by car, the tower of San Martino della Battaglia 8.5 kilometres, Sirmione fourteen, and within a short radius there are Solferino, Cavriana and the Mincio Park.

There are two units, each with its own independent entrance, and they are designed for two people. They are laid out over two floors: a kitchenette fitted with utensils and a dining table on the ground floor, a bedroom with a private bathroom upstairs. Inside there are ceilings with exposed wooden beams, floors in terracotta and board, pointed-arch windows cut into the stone, old family furniture and a fireplace in the living area. Each unit has air conditioning, heating, free wifi, a flat-screen television with satellite channels, a bathroom with bidet, toiletries and a hairdryer. The private bathroom is in each unit, and breakfast, continental or Italian, is provided.

Here one thing must be said clearly that the website makes easy to misunderstand. The services page describes a pool, a wide garden with a pond, a solarium terrace, private patios and a barbecue: these are the services of the BorgoTreCase complex, another property under the same management, not of the Dimora. In the house in via Castello neither a pool nor a wellness area is on record, and the booking portal lists none either. Anyone looking for the pool must therefore check which property they are being accommodated in, because booking the Antica Dimora dell'Ortolano means booking a stone house inside the village, with no pool and no spa.

On age there are no published figures. The property's rules on the booking portal say only that children are not allowed, and the official website declares no threshold in years: the property, in short, publishes no minimum age, and this entry does not invent one. What is certain is that minors are not admitted. Nor are pets, and on this the two sources agree. There is no smoking, no parties are held and quiet is to be respected between 23.00 and 08.00.

There is no reception, so the time of arrival must be given in advance: check-in is from 16.00 to 20.00 and departure at 10.00. The reserved parking is near the residence, not inside it. The accepted payment is cash.

It suits anyone who wants to sleep inside a walled village, with the little lake and the crenellated walls outside the door, and anyone who appreciates the independence of a unit with a kitchen in a very silent place. It suits less anyone looking for hotel services, a pool or a spa: there are none here.