Hip hotels. Italy /

"You can have the universe, if I can have Italy," said Giuseppe Verdi. This sounds generous, but Verdi knew that Italy is a universe—beautiful, diverse, and filled with the relics of two millennia of civilization. The new volume of Hip Hotelspresents amazing places to stay in destinations the length and breadth of its boot-shaped pe...   more 籲insula and islands. Herbert Ypma has ventured far beyond the familiar rolling hills of Tuscany, the postcard-perfect Amalfi Coast, or the Grand Tour destinations of Venice, Florence, and Rome, to introduce real discoveries in underexplored regions such as Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, and Le Marche. You might be inspired to visit the utterly refined Hotel Raya on the Aeolian island of Panarea, from whose all-white terraces you can watch the volcano of Stromboli spurt fiery lava into the night skies. Sicily offers medieval gems like a converted Franciscan monastery in Taormina, and Castello di Falconara, a Norman castle on the beach. At the opposite end of the country, in the ultra-stylish ski town of Cortina d'Ampezzo, is the Hotel de la Poste, run today by the same family as when Hemingway used to drive up from Venice in the early 1930s. If the beach and night life of the Adriatic coast are more your scene, then fashion designer Alberta Ferretti's Carducci 76 makes an appealing base. Or enjoy the peace and splendor of Villa Feltrinelli on the shores of Lake Garda, a stately neogothic property that recently has been revamped and restored by a San Francisco-based design firm. Many hotels are a complete surprise: ancient cave-dwellings in the eroded rocky landscape of Basilicata, or the trulli of Puglia, centuries-old igloo-like constructions with conical slate roofs. And whether cave, abbey, olive mill, fishing hut, or beachside palazzo, every one of these unique hotels is true to its locale in its architecture, design, and gastronomy. 500 photographs, 400 in color.   ?less