Hotel Signum
Family-owned Hotel Signum welcomes guests into a genteel spin on island life – of siestas on wrought-iron day beds, porous rooms that blink through linen curtains towards a smoking Stromboli (fellow Aeolian island), and classic Sicilian breakfasts from vintage crockery. This reimagined fishing village is configured around a pool – its balconies and terraces like theatre seats for views of the Tyrrhenian and a lava-spurting Stromboli after dusk. Aperitivo hour is quite the event from a terrace surrounded by a tangle of cacti, jasmine and honeysuckle, where wild capers and those fat, asymmetrical almonds accompany classic Negronis and glasses of Etna red. A little down the island’s mule tracks lies Spaggia dello Scario for a soak in the warm cobalt water, or more energetic types can attempt to climb one of the island’s two volcanoes. But dinner here is a must, at the hotel’s bougainvillea-framed restaurant for imaginative plates of breaded scabbardfish with almond and tiger milk or seafood spaghetti drizzled in creamy sauce spill out from Martina Caruso’s one-starred Michelin kitchen (Sicily’s youngest female chef to receive a Michelin star and daughter of Signum’s owners).