Haute Comfort

On a visit to the Albergo Bucaneve—a hotel in the mountains of northern Italy run by high-fashion menswear label Ermenegildo Zegna—SIMON WILLIS is surprised to find the ambience more bucolic than blingy.

From the window I could see for more than a hundred kilometres. Below me, in the near distance, were tiny villages following a winding road, little rivers of houses meandering down the hill. Beyond them, the plains of northern Italy spread out as flat as a tabletop, and farther still were the Cottian Alps on the French border. It was something you might glimpse from a plane while climbing away from the airport. Instead, I was sitting down to lunch at the Albergo Bucaneve.

The local landscape informs almost everything about this hotel and spa in Bielmonte, a tiny resort high in the hills of Piedmont about 120 kilometres northwest of Milan. The Albergo Bucaneve (bucaneve is Italian for ‘snowdrop’) sits at the heart of the Oasi Zegna, a 103-square kilometres park owned and protected by Ermenegildo Zegna, the Italian menswear company whose factory has been based in the nearby town of Trivero since 1910. But despite its relationship with one of the world’s leading luxury brands, the hotel is more responsive to flora and fauna than to fashion.