If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR214.18), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Butchers, bakers – possibly candlestick-makers – but definitely a barn, tavern and sawmill: over the 500 years boutique stay and gasthaus1477 Reichhalter has existed in Dolomites town Lana, it’s got a few past-life notches on the bedposts (although nowadays, frames are filled with comfy Simmons mattresses). The years have bestowed an aesthetically pleasing lived-in look too, with an untouched façade, weathered walls and stonework – a rustic minimalism embellished with mid-century furniture finds. Klaus Dissertori (who also owns Parkhotel Mondschein and Hotel Schwarzschmied) has lengthened its lifespan still, adding lively terraces and a cool culinary team.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A bottle of sparkling Rocco (a non-alcoholic South Tyrol aperitivo speciality made from apples)
Eight, all with names that nod to the hotel’s many past lives.
Check–Out
11am, but flexible, subject to availability and a charge. Check-in is from 3pm to 7pm, and it’s advisable to let staff know your arrival time in advance.
Prices
Double rooms from £201.76 (€236), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €1.90 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include a breakfast of freshly baked brioche and breads, homemade jams, fruit and crudités.
Also
Regretfully, this historic hotel isn’t suitable for guests with reduced mobility. But the Schönmüller room has been specially kitted out to suit allergy-sufferers.
At the hotel
Terrace, bikes to borrow for free, library, charged laundry service, and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: Marshall Bluetooth speaker, yoga mat, minibar, bathrobes and slippers, air-conditioning, and Susanne Kaufmann bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Room names look wistfully to the past; 1477 Reichhalter has worn many hats over the years, and monikers such as Schönmüller, Mötzpanckh and – the pretty self-explanatory – Mihl are homages to each era. Weathered white walls and stonework show it ageing gracefully, while styling by interiors expert Christina Von Berg, mid-century flea-market finds, and artwork by Jasmine Deporta bring it a bit more up-to-date. And, for that morning intake of mountain air, three of the eight rooms (Mihl, Stadele and Helmsdorf) have a balcony.
Spa
There’s no spa onsite, but guests are welcome to enjoy the vineyard-view pools, Finnish and bio saunas, steam bath, Susanne Kaufmann skincare, a wide range of treatments (from massages to skin peels), yoga classes, and personal training (some of the above for a charge) at sister stay Hotel Schwarzschmied, a 10-minute stroll away.
Packing tips
Bring your treks-iest wearables.
Also
On request, staff can arrange for a bouquet of mountain and wild flowers to be delivered to your room.
Children can stay, but the only concession made to them is baby-monitoring equipment to borrow. (You’ll find Hotel Schwarzschmied more family-friendly.)
The terraces on the roof or outside the front of the house are convivial leafy spaces when the sun is shining; and the wood pews in the restaurant have that authentic cosy ‘inn’ feel for chillier days.
Dress Code
The hotel’s shabbied-up-over-time minimalist look would be an ideal backdrop for either some early Nineties grunge or even a dirndl that doesn’t feel too costume-y. But, most of the time you’ll probably be in hiking wear, and that’s a-ok.
Hotel restaurant
The spartan decor of 1477 Reichhalter’s former tavern turned restaurant (open every day but Sunday) – weathered white walls, wood panelling, hardy rustic tables, mismatched crockery, cut glassware – denotes its honest, earthy approach to ingredient-sourcing. But even the humblest bit of produce gets a significant role in imaginative dishes such as gilthead seabream with yuzu and sour cream; falafel and anchovies with raspberries and buttermilk, and white chocolate with peaches and lemon verbena – or the delicious tortellonis and risottos which change with what’s growing that season. And there are themed culinary events (focusing on seafood feasts, roast goose dinners, celebratory aperitivi) held throughout the year.
Hotel bar
The bar is the same as the restaurant, or you can sashay and sip into the library or onto the two terraces. Order refreshing homemade lemonade or a local brew or South Tyrolean wine when the mood takes you.
Last orders
Breakfast is from 8am to 10.30am, lunch is from noon till 2pm and dinner from 6pm to 9pm, Monday to Saturday. The bar closes at 10pm.
Room service
Available, but there’s a tray charge (and not many dining spaces outside of the restaurant and terrace).
Historic hideaway 1477 Reichhalter has stood at the centre of fair South Tyrolean town Lana, on Via Macello, for centuries now, and maintains its Dolomites mountain-retreat charm to this day.
Planes
Bolzano is the closest airport, just a 30-minute drive away, but it only has a handful of direct connections to Continental cities. Otherwise, larger hubs at Verona and Innsbruck are both around two hours’ drive away. Transfers can be arranged from all for an extra charge.
Trains
Trains arrive from Bolzano, Innsbruck, Verona and further afield to the Lana-Postal/Lana-Burgstall station, a 10-minute drive from the hotel. Staff can send a free shuttle to pick you up from here (or from Merano and Bolzano stations for an extra charge).
Automobiles
The hotel itself is in a pedestrian zone (although there’s parking 150 metres away at P4 Parkplatz Gempenstrasse, if required), and guests get a free Mobilcard, which lets them use city bikes and public transport across South Tyrol; it’s all well-connected so you could explore easily without a car, but you’ll need wheels to reach the Dolomites’ remoter parts.
Worth getting out of bed for
Tucked into the Etschtal Valley/Val d’Adige, with a view to the majesty of the Dolomites, Lana is a mountain-resort town that’s both quaintly historic (1477 Reichhalter itself is more than 500 years old) yet wildly expansive, rolling out into apple groves, verdant hikes and fairy-tale hillside castles. Get acquainted with your immediate surroundings with a shopping spree through Am Gries: find fine Italian footwear at Schuhhaus Kuntner and Knoll, Gourmet Ladele and Pur Südtirol for picnic pieces and regional wines, and Tierlodn Lana for luxury pet items. Galanthus is a flower-bedecked garden nursery where events are sometimes held, and more greens can be found at Golfclub Lana, where guests get a 20 per cent discount. Top up on natural highs on hikes along the Vigiljoch (which can be reached by the area’s second oldest cable-car), more than 1,700 metres up, where you’ll find the Bärenbad mineral springs and picturesque Schwarze Lacke; or head higher still into the Laugenspitze, for a five-hour circular hike and 360-degree panorama from the top. And the 40-kilometre-long Ulten Valley sports deep forests, glassine lakes, and cute chalets. Or navigate by historic masterpieces, such as Niederlana church’s 14-metre high Schnatterpeck altar; the art-filled, 13th-century, Romanesque St Margarethen Church; the exterior of 12th-century Braunsberg Castle; and dinky, Instagrammable St Hippolyt, set on a hillside. Kränzelhof is a mediaeval manor house turned winery with a tasting room and an art garden. Trips out to both Merano and Bolzano will easily fill a day. The former has the Monocle shop, vast exhibition space Kunst Meran, thermal baths, and Trauttmansdorff Castle with its maze of gardens. And the latter has modern art at the Museion, famous glacier mummy Ötzi at the Archaeology Museum, and impressive castles and churches.
Local restaurants
If you like what’s cooking at 1477 Reichhalter, then it’s worth trying the farm-to-table menu at sister stay Hotel Schwarzschmied’s restaurant La Fucina, where dining is conscientiously ‘slow’ in style, and the kitchen are on first-name terms with providers, so on the cards are salads from the hotel’s own garden, very fresh sheep’s and goat’s cheeses, organic wines and ice-cream sprinkled with wild berries. Also very sustainable and hyper-seasonal is Restaurant Miil in Bolzano, with beautifully dressed garden tables and artful plates of salmon tartare with pine kernels, beets and spruce ‘freckles’; or bass with asparagus and foraged herbs. And antique wood-lined eatery Blaue Traube (closed Sundays and Mondays) has a very modern daily-changing tasting menu, served to all at the table, which might have bao buns, Alpine dashi, deer stroganoff or salmon crépinette.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this centuries-honed hotel in mountain-resort town Lana and unpacked their slope-tackling gear and punnet of locally grown apples, a full account of their treks through time will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside 1477 Reichhalter in South Tyrol…
If you’re looking for a simpler life, Dolomites stay 1477 Reichhalter is a good place to start. It's little embellished, where white walls, stone work and shutters wear their age with pride, the restaurant still looks very much like the tavern it was centuries ago, and much of what you’ll do during your stay is admire nature’s wonders and meander through the mountains. Although it hasn’t exactly had the simplest path to this point, having been a butchers, bakers, mill, barn, and more since it was built in – you guessed it – 1477. But all this chastity doesn’t mean you have to live like a peasant of old. There are courtyard and roof terraces to socialise on, a library lounge, lucky mid-century furniture finds in rooms, and locality-guided cuisine; and owner Klaus Dissertori has a stableful of stays nearby, including the Susanne Kaufmann-spa-blessed Hotel Schwarzschmied, that guests can make use of. So, if you need a place to rest, to reconnect to nature, and to relish Italo-Ladin cuisine, the answer is really rather simple.
