Il Pellicano

Patricia Leatham was a Standard Oil heiress. Michael Graham was a British Royal Air Force pilot. They found this cliff of pine and juniper overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea in the 1950s, built a house, and eventually opened it as a hotel. The story is important because the hotel has never forgotten it — Il Pellicano retains the atmosphere of a private house opened generously to discerning friends.

The coves below are accessible only by the hotel's private water taxis, down cliff paths that have been walked by the same families for generations. The pool is set into the cliff face above the sea. The rooms are in pale cottages scattered among the pines, connected by stone paths that smell of rosemary and sea air.

The clientele is largely Italian old money, northern Europeans who found it decades ago, and those who understand that genuine luxury is not about newness or spectacle but about place — the precise pleasure of sea, stone, impeccable food, and being left entirely in peace.