Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
Touching the Italian capital more than 20 years later, I was confident that “things could only get better”.
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This time my accommodation would be Palazzo Fiuggi, a luxury medical wellness retreat some 55 miles southeast of Rome.
On the downside, there would be no pizza.
Built in 1913, Palazzo Fiuggi began life as a favorite destination for European aristocracy and the Italian royal family.
In the following decades, it attracted an international jet set that included Pablo Picasso and Ingrid Bergman.
Since it reopened three years ago following a major renovation, the multi-award winning resort has welcomed celebrities including Oprah Winfrey who raved that it was the best spa experience of her life following a visit in early 2023.
Nestled amidst verdant hills in a region famous since the 1300s for its “healing” natural spring waters, the hotel’s slogan is “longer life, better living”.
I arrived, courtesy of the driver sent to the hotel, in time for lunch.
Food is one of the aspects that sets Palazzo Fiuggi apart.
Its ethos of “food as medicine” has been crafted by Heinz Beck, the Michelin three-star chef who runs the famous La Pergola restaurant in Rome and curates Palazzo’s cuisine.
There is no red meat, alcohol, added sugars, or coffee (although they do serve English breakfast tea).
Each guest has their own personal meal plan, ranging from around 1,200 to 2,500 calories a day depending on their goals, from weight loss and ‘detox’ to muscle building.
I was on the Blue menu – 1,900 calories a day – and no meat, at my own request (the hotel serves chicken).
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are taken in Quattro Continenti’s spectacular dining room, replete with chandeliers and frescoed ceilings – although the dress code is casual.
Every morning, you get a menu detailing your set meals for the day: a three-course lunch, a four-course lunch, a surprisingly substantial breakfast, plus two snacks (usually a fresh smoothie and a small portion of fruit) , all washed down with still or sparkling water and herbal tea.
It is tailored for the optimum balance of protein, fibre, antioxidants and fatty acids.
I was amazed at how much food I could get for 1,900 calories, and how much flavor was packed into each Masterchef-style small plate.
The meals were excellent. I was never hungry, but never completely uncomfortable either.
I dined on everything from sea bream carpaccio with peaches to tortellini stuffed with ricotta herbs in a tomato consommé and stuffed calamari with wilted spinach.
Breakfast included honey sweetened porridge, an egg white omelette, poached egg on avocado tartare, and even a mini blueberry muffin (sweetened naturally by the fruit).
Beyond food, Palazzo Fiuggi has a huge spa where you can get everything from blood work and Botox to bone density scans and lymphatic drainage massages.
This is where the world’s wealthy flock is to be poked, prodded and pampered.
During the stay, there were guests from Japan, India, the Middle East, and the USA, as well as Germany, France and England.
This is where I went for the first of two body scans.
For the first – a 3D body scan – I had to stand on a pedestal in nothing but my bikini while I rotated 360° as the connected computer produced a digital model of my body detailing precise circumference measurements correct for everything from my calves to my neck.
The second – Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) – passes a weak electrical current through the body to estimate the composition of water, fat, and other minerals.
Both tests also estimate your metabolic rate – the number of calories you burn in a day.
Strangely, the 3D scan suggested I was around 19% body fat (putting me in the “athletic” range) while the BIA put it at 27%, so it’s hard to know how much to taken from the scans – except that I was assured that everything was within “normal” parameters.
If you really want to, there’s almost no end to the medical investigations you can choose to undertake if a full body ‘MOT’ is your thing.
For me, the main attraction was the relaxation facilities.
There were three pools: a large indoor heated pool where you could swim, through a tunnel, to an outdoor heated pool overlooking the town and hills of Fiuggi.
The outdoor pool also has a large jacuzzi attached.
A third pool – the huge, cool, rectangular “Panoramic pool” – was located in the gardens surrounded by trees and sun loungers, with additional daybeds inside a glass enclosed terrace.
Wherever I went, there were plenty of empty lounges perfectly prepared with fresh towels and supplies of Fiuggi mineral water.
It wasn’t the kind of place you had to worry about putting your towel down at 6am.
Most of the time, I was alone.
In the adjacent Roman spa, guests can work their way through a series of rooms at their leisure.
Walking down from the indoor pool, the first thing you come to are the twin hot and cold plunge pools that make up the Kneipp.
Sebastian Kneipp, a 19th century Bavarian-German priest who pioneered hydrotherapy – the idea that exposing people to water at different temperatures and pressures can have healing effects – believed that all disease originates in the circulatory system, stimulating the flow of blood by switching between hot and pressure. cold water would promote health.
Putting aside my skepticism of pseudoscience, I gave it a try.
It is advised to complete 10 circuits, walking first through the warm center-deep pool and then through the cold.
It’s shockingly icy at first, but quite pleasant by the fifth round and left my legs with a tingling sensation.
Further into the Roman spa there are separate women’s and men’s spa lounges, each furnished with its own sauna, steam room, and cool plunge pool looking out onto the gardens through floor-to-ceiling windows. to the ceiling.
In addition, there is an infrared sauna.
There is some evidence that exposure to infrared light can boost circulation and speed up muscle repair.
In my case, the warming effect against my back and neck felt like it eased the few tensions and niggles left after a blissful aromatherapy massage earlier in the day.
Palazzo Fiuggi also boasts a Thalasso Spa, which can be booked for one hour every day and accommodates a maximum of four people at once (mostly, I had the place to myself).
Thalasso is the use of sea water and sea minerals – mud, seaweed – as a form of therapy.
Thalasso Spa is # Palazzo Fiuggi # Italy pic.twitter.com/4BU2CbRdCN
— Helen McArdle (@HMcArdleHT) June 21, 2024
Guests are given shower caps and inflatable neck pillows so they can lie back and float in each of two large, warm pools – one magnesium-enriched to create Dead Sea-like buoyancy, and a second saltwater pool.
After 12 minutes in each, you are advised to plunge yourself into (yet another) freezing cold pool, this time so frigid that I sound more like Sergeant Howie being dragged towards the Wicker Man than someone enjoying peak relaxation.
I lasted about 10 seconds.
Beyond the luxury of the resort itself – which also includes a cinema room and a first class gym – one of the things that must be done during a visit to Fiuggi is a morning hike.
The hotel offers a Hiking for Longevity program where guests can go on various guided tours every day, but it is also possible to order them “a la carte” if you prefer a one-off trip.
They can even provide walking boots and poles for unprepared amateurs (like me).
On the third day of my stay, I and two other guests – a television producer from Paris who was at the Palazzo to relieve stress, and a 26-year-old Greek woman from London who was at the end of an eight-year recovery from chronic fatigue – were picked up outside the hotel at 8am, and a whisper 45 minutes up into the mountains to our starting point.
The fresh air, sunshine and scenery of Italy in June must be one of the best natural tonics out there.
We walked for over three hours through a beautiful valley, led by our two patient and friendly Italian guides.
This was a fast, moderately difficult hike that anyone with a good level of fitness could enjoy.
We were back in time for lunch, with nothing but another afternoon of luxurious repose stretching ahead of us.
Would I really be extending my life if I lived like this every day? Who knows. But I’d love to try it.
Helen McArdle was a guest of Palazzo Fiuggi on the Tasting Programme, which is available over four nights with prices starting from £3,189 per person based on two sharing and including all accommodation, food and drink, and treatments within the program.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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