Palazzo Fiuggi

Opened in 2021 after a €30m restoration of the Grand Hotel Palazzo della Fonte, a 1913 landmark on a hilltop above the medieval spa town of Fiuggi, an hour from Rome. The building has served as a hospital and an Allied Forces headquarters; it is now owned by the Forte Village group and run as a medical retreat.

The credentials are unusually specific. Programmes are designed by Professor David Della Morte Canosci, a specialist in senescence-related disease and genetics, and every stay opens with real diagnostics — ECG, echocardiography, DEXA body composition, microbiota and metabolic testing — rather than a wellness questionnaire.

The facilities match. Six thousand square metres across 21 treatment rooms, six medical rooms, a 700 sqm reconstruction of a Roman bath, two thalassotherapy pools filled with Fiuggi's mineral water, and a movement lab installed in the former ballroom.

Food is the distinguishing element. Menus are built by Heinz Beck, who holds three Michelin stars, working with the medical team — and they are calibrated to your programme rather than chosen from a card. That combination is rarer than it sounds, and it is the reason guests who find clinic food punishing tend to manage here.

Programmes run a minimum of seven days, and the shortest stay is the least useful. Anyone hoping to pair this with Rome sightseeing has misjudged what they are booking.