Tenuta Cammarana

Tenuta Cammarana is in the Cammarana district, in open countryside within the municipality of Ragusa, halfway between Ragusa Ibla and the sea and a short distance from Donnafugata Castle. It sits 360 metres above sea level, and that is not a detail: the position was chosen in the eighteenth century precisely for the breeze that rises from the coast and for the view that falls away over the land towards the sea. Today the property is a bed and breakfast, run by Silvia La Padula, made out of the family house built in 1778 as the summer residence of the Sortino Trono barons, who left their palace in Ragusa Ibla for the countryside each summer.

The rooms are all different from one another because they occupy spaces that once had other uses: the horse stable, the carriage store, the fire house, the hayloft, the henhouse, the sheepfold, the pheasantry. The restoration work was conservative and the house says so openly. The bathrooms, which did not exist in 1778, were fitted into reclaimed spaces of varying size: all of them have heating and a heated towel rail, shower, washbasin, lit mirror, lavatory and bidet, honeycomb Bellora towels and Malin+Goetz products. The owners advise writing before booking to be assigned a suitable room, because the rooms are not interchangeable.

Around the house lie the walled gardens, planted along with the house in the eighteenth century and tended without hard pruning or chemical fertilisers: jasmine, bearded irises and peonies in April, old roses in May, pelargoniums, lotus flowers and bougainvillea in summer. The inner courtyards follow one after another as far as the Hortus Conclusus, which looks out over the land sloping down towards the sea and towards the castle. The pool is outdoors and seasonal, open from 1 June to 30 September with dates that may shift with the weather, in full sun among the fields and the centuries-old carob trees, reserved for guests of the house alone.

The wellness area is called Salute e relax and it is small and honest: a hammam and a Finnish sauna, with a view over the garden, mint infusions and dried fruit. Access is by appointment only and only between 18.00 and 20.00, and it is closed in July and August. There appears to be no longer water and steam circuit, and the website names no hydromassage tubs.

On access the two sources do not agree, and it is worth knowing before booking. The official website, at the foot of the rooms page, writes that the house welcomes children from 16; Booking and the other portals state 18 instead, and that is the figure this page publishes until the property confirms the lower threshold in writing. Anyone wanting to bring a young person between sixteen and eighteen should therefore write to the owners and have the rule confirmed. Anyone looking for an adults-only address in the Hyblaean countryside, with the baroque of Ragusa and Modica within driving distance and no noise in the evening, will find it here. Anyone expecting a hotel spa with long hours and a menu of treatments will not: the wellness area opens for two hours a day and stays closed at the height of summer.