Luxury Travel: Where to Go in 2024 luxurytravelmagazine.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from luxurytravelmagazine.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In the Noughties, if I stayed in a hotel’s annexe I felt slighted. Back then you had to be in the main house. You were a nobody if you were demoted to an outbu
Terrace view at FORESTIS, Italy
Set the scene
Up here on the south-facing slope of the Plose mountain there s no getting away from the awe-making views of the snaggle-tooth Dolomite peaks. As you d expect from a hotel with a huge spa, all manner of saunas (from herbal to a cabin in the forest) and access to the high-Alpine trails of the region, the crowd is sinewy and sporty. But then there s plenty of room for cocktails at sunset too – Forestis claims to have the highest rooftop bar in the world.
Advertisement
The backstory
The young local couple behind this place, Stefan Hinteregger and Teresa Unterthiner, wanted to create a destination that was supremely rooted in their native region. Stefan s hotelier father Alois came across the old building on the site 21 years ago (previously planned as a sanatorium) and realised the potential of the location. The current iteration was six years in the making, with Teresa and Stefan, who returned from working in Asia to drive the ne
Bark-infused cocktails, forest cuisine and stone pine massages are all part of the mountain magic at Forestis in South Tyrol
What kind of tree are you? Joking aside, itâs a serious question. Iâm a stone pine, or zirbelkiefer, according to spa manager Alessandra Tiengo, and Iâve been mulling over the answer ever since she started prodding my upper back with a spindle-shaped wooden stick.
The masseuse is in the midst of delivering a personalised tree therapy ceremony based on one of four healing woods â the others being mountain pine, spruce and larch â and I think Iâm actually enjoying the experience. In part because of her sing-song Italian purr, but also in view of the fact that she is dousing me in stone pine oil from the surrounding forest and the potent scent is strong enough to settle me into a fever dream that I donât want to shake. It carries me out into the snow-filled air where I imagine myself standing, as I am now, butt-naked, besieged