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 (EUR212.73), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
A contemporary wellness retreat with a stellar spa and farm-to-table dining, Hotel Schwarzschmied is a Tyrolean tonic. If its surrounding verdant pastures and rocky peaks don’t soothe your soul, the hotel’s peacefully pared-back interiors just might. If days spent yomping the mountain trails or wheeling through the countryside, visiting dairy farms or wineries, don’t raise your happiness quotient, perhaps a ritual of daily yoga, spa treatments, lounging and swimming will. Or maybe it’s the finessed regional fare at La Fucina you’ll award top marks to – so fresh and seasonal, you’ll hardly notice it’s healthy.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A bottle of sparkling Rocco (a non-alcoholic South Tyrol aperitivo speciality made from apples)
Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £200.40 (€234), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €2.90 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include an extensive buffet breakfast, with à la carte options, served at La Fucina.
Also
Hotel Schwarzschmied has ground-floor Garden Rooms that are wheelchair accessible, with widened doorways and bigger bathrooms that feature roll-in showers and lowered sinks; please note that there are no specific handles, grab rails or lowered controls.
At the hotel
Free bikes to borrow, (paid) e-bike hire, library, and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV, Marshall Bluetooth speaker, air-conditioning, minibar, yoga mat, bathrobes, and Susanne Kaufmann bath products.
Our favourite rooms
We’re applauding Hotel Schwarzschmied for the breadth of its room choices, from budget options to breathtakingly sleek suites, all with the hotel’s trademark pared-back contemporary decor. Choose between rooms in the main house, garden wing, or residence. In the latter, family rooms feature a bunk room for little Smiths. The Garden Suites have an appealing open-plan layout and are light-filled and airy. In the main house, Junior Suites and Suites occupy the middle floors, but we’re drawn to the Rooftop Rooms and Rooftop Suites for their cut-above outdoor spaces with across-the-valley views.
Poolside
Two pools – indoor and out at the hotel’s spa – are filled with revitalised Granderwasser, said to be restored to molecular superiority through careful processing, with the upshot that your skin feels softer. Both pools are heated and open from 7am until 8pm. Verdant valley views, a peaceful setting opposite the vine terraces, and an abundance of lounging spots, make either pool ideal for lingering.
Spa
As you’d expect of a wellness resort, the spa at Hotel Schwarzschmied is a polished Alpine number, featuring a heated outdoor pool, outdoor Finnish sauna, a bio sauna and steam bath. In the complex set back from the pool, you’ll find a tea bar, and panoramic relaxation lounges where you can pull up a lounger overlooking the garden or by the fireplace. Manicures, pedicures and waxing are available, but it’s the spa’s signature facials and massages, with amenities by Susanne Kaufmann, that top our wishlist (there are tailored therapies for Mr Smiths, too) – especially if taken at one of the new outdoor treatment cabins. There’s also a fitness room, where you’ll find free weights, machines, and stylishly timbered cardio equipment.
Packing tips
Fitness kit and outdoorsy gear should be your main focus – we’re talking yoga, swimming, and hiking – we’ll leave the dress code for stiller moments down to you.
Also
Daily yoga lessons and two guided hikes each week are included with your stay.
Very welcome. Most rooms have a sofa-bed. And during July and August, a yurt in the grounds is the site for organised activities (for four- to 14-year-olds).
Best for
All ages – although little Smiths aged four to 14 will benefit from the activities available in summer months.
Recommended rooms
There are Family Rooms with bunk beds in the Residence, and we’re eyeing up Rooftop or Garden Rooms, as well as Garden Suites (if your children will share a sofa-bed), all of which have family-friendly layouts and sleep up to four.
Crèche
There’s no crèche at the hotel, but during July and August, supervising adults run activities in the yurt and surrounding grounds for children aged four to 14.
Activities
The hotel has free bikes to borrow (mountain and road varieties), or you can hire e-bikes. Trails take you up into the mountains straight from Lana – reward your climb with a cooling dip in a mountain lake. And visit the Linterhof sheep dairy. In winter, the small ski field at Vigilhof/Monte San Vigilio is extremely family friendly, reachable by funicular from Lana, and stars alongside an ice rink and two-kilometre toboggan run.
Swimming pool
Children are allowed in both the indoor and outdoor pools, but will need adult supervision, as there’s no lifeguard.
Meals
High-chairs are available, the breakfast buffet is ideal for fussy palates, and at other times of day, this is a place to ‘mangiare in famiglia’.
Also
With toddlers in tow, you’ll find a baby-carrier backpack is your friend out on the trails.
Sustainability efforts
The hotel runs entirely on solar electricity. Whichever ingredients aren’t supplied by Hotel Schwarzschmied or Villa Arnica’s gardens, is sourced locally, either from within the valley or the wider Bolzano region. And the most recent overhaul of the rooms was put together by Tyrolean builders and makers.
In summer, dining on the terrace, where views over the vines roll towards the mountains, is the only way to go.
Dress Code
Casual attire is fine by day, but for dinner you’ll want smarter threads so you can keep up with Pircher’s well dressed plates.
Hotel restaurant
Schwarzschmied’s flagship restaurant, La Fucina, is a light-filled, parquet-floored space to one side of the ground floor that’s steered by chef de cuisine Andreas Pircher. Breakfast is a picker’s dream of a Continental buffet, stocked with freshly harvested fruit, locally made yoghurt, pastries, cereal and toast, with hot dishes cooked to order. ‘Slow food’ is the proud mantra of the hotel – an ethos it delivers wholeheartedly, with herbs, veg and fruit grown in the Schwarzbauergarten behind the hotel, and most other ingredients delivered directly from farm to kitchen, whether it’s cheese, yoghurt and honey from the Ulten Valley, bread from Nals, organic eggs from Vinschgau, tea from Bolzano, or coffee from Fiè. In Lana there’s a monastery winery, the bottles from which feature on the restaurant’s list alongside other Alto Adige DOC vintages, but beer, brandies and fruit juices are also locally sourced. The result is health-focused, fresh plates that chime with the hotel’s emphasis on wellness. Adjacent to La Fucina, the lobby area flows freely into the hotel bar and café tables at Bistro Luce, which has a menu of small plates and snacks that are in keeping with the hotel’s slow-food principles, but can be enjoyed more informally through the afternoon.
Hotel bar
Low chairs and tables, and upright bistro-style options are scattered throughout the open-plan lobby, with tables spilling onto the terrace. Once a week, there’s a classical performance at the piano, but any day of the week, this is an idyllic spot from which to sip on rhubarb fizz or a glass of sparkling Tyrolean Arunda from nearby Mölten.
Last orders
Bistro Luce is open from noon until 5pm. Breakfast is served at La Fucina from 7.30am until 11am; for dinner, it’s 6.30pm until 9pm.
Room service
You can order from the restaurant or bistro menus (depending on which is open) to your room between 8am and 10pm (extra costs apply).
Hotel Schwarzschmied is in the idyllic mountain resort of Lana in South Tyrol, between Bolzano and Merano.
Planes
Bolzano is the nearest airport, a 25-minute drive from the hotel, with regional flights and a few international connections on the Continent (which vary by season). Verona and Innsbruck are the nearest international hubs, each around two hours away by road. The hotel can arrange transfers from €50 each way for Bolzano, or from €500 each way for Verona or Innsbruck.
Trains
Lana-Postal/Lana-Burgstall is the nearest station, with direct trains to Brennero or Bolzano, and the hotel can arrange free transfers.
Automobiles
Covered parking at the hotel is free, and there are electric-vehicle charging points available at extra cost.
Worth getting out of bed for
Alps to the west of you, Dolomites to the right, but you’re not ‘stuck’ in the middle, we promise. Lana, between Merano and Bolzano, puts you in a prime spot for exploring the Etsch and Ulten valleys, home to waterfalls, cool mountain lakes, forested slopes, and of course walking trails – hotel information will point out the nearest: a 19th-century water channel, the Brandis Waalweg, is the source of a short and gentle walking route above Lana. Cycling and mountain biking are popular here, too – with bikes of both kinds free to borrow from Hotel Schwarzschmied (they also hire out e-bikes for an additional cost). You’re away from the main Dolomites ski area in Lana, but there’s a small, family-friendly ski hill at Vigilhof/Monte San Vigilio, which you can reach by funicular from town; here you’ll also find an ice rink and a two-kilometre toboggan run. As the vines behind the hotel suggest, you’re in Tyrolean wine country with fermenting hotspots including the local monastery, and Arunda Sektkellerei in Mölten/Meltina: at nearby Zollweghof winery, there are cellar tours and a weekly Friday walking tour. Just up the road, Kränzelhof winery is also open for guided tours if you book at least a day ahead.
Local restaurants
Miil is an upscale dining spot at the Kränzelhof winery where seasonal fine dining showcases Tyrolean produce, accompanied by house bottles. A daily-changing, eight-course tasting menu, served nightly at 7pm, centres around nose-to-tail cuisine (sweetbreads, salmon crépinette, venison stroganoff) at stellar eatery, Zur Blaue Traube in Algund/Lagundo. Lana brewery, restaurant and gardens, Pfefferlechner, serves regional home-cooking-style plates and flagons of craft beer to chequer-clothed tables – and is family-friendly, too. In Merano, try Meteo for moreish Mediterranean plates.
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 wellness retreat in Lana and unpacked their yoga kit and Susanne Kaufmann skincare, a full account of their spa break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Hotel Schwarzschmied in South Tyrol…
When it comes to wellness, South Tyrol has many built-in advantages – something that Hotel Schwarzschmied’s owners were quick to make the most of. The region’s mountain scenery is an instant hit of calm. The Tyrolean larder delivers a strong dose of good health too, supplying farm-to-table restaurant La Fucina with hotel-grown produce, and ingredients straight from local producers that could not be fresher nor more flavourful. Rooms benefit from the kind of generous proportions you only find in rural stays – light-filled with understated, neutral decor, and appointed with private outdoor space in most categories from budget to suite. But it’s the spa that’s at the heart of this boutique wellness retreat: overhauled with timbered treatment cabins in the garden; Granderwasser pools indoors and out, and holistic, rooted-in-nature treatments by Susanne Kaufmann. Daily yoga is included with every stay, and twice a week you can head out on a free guided hike into the hills. Alternate low-tempo days given over to pool lounging, spa therapies and yoga, with pulse-raising adventures in the great outdoors – whether that’s a winery tour or cycling through farm-flanked lanes. Wellness at Hotel Schwarzschmied comes with a happy supply of built-in pleasure.
