Frederick Searle, who bought the old monastery of Sant’Antonio near Tivoli in 1878, first saw and fell in love with it when looking for a place from which to paint the great waterfall, across the ravine from the town. A visit today is equally one of enchantment: the little church at the top dedicated to the kindly Sant’Antonio of Padua; the simple rooms, each with a shuttered window opening on to the valley, the waterfall and Tivoli itself; the upper belvedere, giving a first full taste of what, with a few battered edges, can still be recognised as the ‘loveliest view in the world’. Hints of a distant past appear in cells with mosaic floors, and in the kitchen, where on the inner wall is some ‘opus reticulatum’, a sign of Romans at work; but no moment is more thrilling than when, having passed through an arcaded loggia and down to the level of the fruitful, scented and beautiful terraced garden, an old door is opened in the house wall – a moment it would be unfair to spoil by describing in advance.

The truth is that the walls of a Roman villa, dated to about 60 BC and believed to have belonged to the poet Horace, survive up to the middle floor of the present house, itself begun in about 850 AD. Franciscan monks have lived here, and Popes. The final additions were made ‘as late as the 17th century’. It was abandoned around 1870 and rescued by the Searles, who spent many years gently repairing it.

Sant’Antonio has descended to their great-great-grandson, who sought to give it a safe future. Knowing of our involvement with Keats’ House in Rome, he asked us for help. With the greatest of pleasure, we are letting his house for him.

As if Sant’Antonio itself were not enough, at Tivoli you can visit the Villa d’Este, with its incomparable fountains, and Hadrian’s Villa, the inspiration for many British garden buildings. Lazio, with its hills and lakes, its castles, gardens and wines, its relics of Rome and Etrusca, is one of the most beautiful and least-known regions of Italy.

Sleeps: 12