Sonnwies

Lüsen is a village of about 1,500 people sitting 12 km above the bishop's town of Brixen, and Sonnwies is perched above it on a south-facing mountain meadow with roughly 300 days of sun a year. The Hinteregger family has run it for more than 20 years, and it is now a five-star resort exclusively for families, which means nobody at the next table is going to raise an eyebrow at your two-year-old. The building itself is genuinely handsome: alpine-reduced design in local spruce, stone pine and oak, floor-to-ceiling glass fronts that can actually be darkened, suspended fireplaces in the larger suites. Accommodation runs from 40 sqm studios through two and three-room natural wood suites with adjoining children's rooms, up to loft suites, an imperial suite and standalone chalets. The children's rooms are properly separate, not a sofa bed in the corner of yours, and the bigger suites sleep five or six without anyone drawing a short straw, which puts Sonnwies among the more honest options in Italy for a family of five.

Start with the childcare, because it is the number that decides things: 70 hours a week from age three at the kids club, 60 hours of baby care from three weeks old, both included in the rate rather than sold back to you at the desk. The kids club runs until 21.00 six nights a week, so dinner is a real dinner, a five-course menu with alpine, Mediterranean or vegan lines, while the children eat earlier at a supervised table at 18.15. The equipment is handled too: free strollers and backpack carriers, radiation-free baby monitors, a kitchenette open 24 hours with a sterilizer and bottle warmer, and a pediatrician who comes to the hotel rather than the other way around. Days fill themselves without much help from you, between a working farm with more than 30 animals, a culinary garden the kitchen genuinely cooks from, an aquapark with over 100 m of slides, and in winter a private lift with magic carpets and a ski school giving ski-in/ski-out access straight from the door. Parents get a 4,000 sqm spa with an adults-only Finnish sauna and herbal steam baths to disappear into.