A Doubleheader Spa Trip to Lake Como and Tuscany

A brand-new spa at one of our favorite hotels on Lake Como has just opened, with treatments powered by one of our favorite clean, regeneratively farmed beauty brands. The farm where those products are made is home to another, totally different (but equally luxurious) spa, in Tuscany. The ultimate luxury: visiting one right after the other.

Passalacqua, which opened just two years ago on Lake Como, made The goop List this year. It’s both sumptuous and intimate, with luxurious lakefront villas dotted between flowering gardens and olive groves. There are green lily-petal parasols by the spectacular lake-view pool straight out of a Slim Aarons photo shoot, a private boat ready to take you out on the water, and a stunning greenhouse bar and restaurant designed by JJ Martin of La DoubleJ. Now, with the unveiling of the new spa, Passalacqua has managed to out-Passalacqua itself.

Nestled in a former stable behind the main building, the spa is hung with Moroccan lanterns that cast patterns across the vaulted ceilings. Ancient stone pillars, exquisite botanical prints, and chic rattan lounge chairs set an instantly relaxing tone. Down a staircase, there’s an epic dark-fir sauna, grey marble steam bath, cold plunge, and lounge. Follow a mysterious underground stone corridor around the corner and you reach the star of the spa: a greenhouse-enclosed saltwater pool lined in Palladian marble mosaic. It overlooks the gardens and Lake Como, so it’s a tempting place to lounge for an entire afternoon.

Try the rejuvenating Jet Lag Remedy massage, the Awakening Sicilian sea salt body scrub, and the nourishing Cocoon treatment, but make sure to get the bespoke facial, which starts with a cleanse involving a massage with an organic green clay cleansing balm for what feels like 20 minutes. After an exfoliation, there’s a soothing hyaluronic-acid-infused mask, and then an even more heavenly massage that coddles the skin in moisture. The 60-minute treatment left my skin smooth, supple, sculpted, and absolutely luminous. Convinced, I took home both the Divine Cleanse—it’s the most nourishing, purifying, skin-smoothing cleanser I’ve ever used—and the Golden Dew mask. The combination makes for a mini moisture-bomb facial I can do at home that’s really kept the glow going.

It doesn’t matter which room or villa you’re in—they’re all luxuriously maximalist: plush king beds with soft Beltrami sheets, marble bathrooms with brass-flower-wrapped light fixtures, vintage-printed trunks that conceal TVs, and singular pieces sourced around Italy, from a magnificent Murano glass chandelier to glossy antique wardrobes.

The food is incredible. The La DoubleJ greenhouse feels like a glorious Italian dinner party, with hummus and grilled vegetables from the garden, artisanal pizza, handmade pasta, marinated sardines, and more. For more-formal occasions, there’s an actual ballroom—Sala Ovale—where course after course comes out under breathtaking frescoed ceilings. Or you can eat outside under a striped awning on the lush garden terrace.

Beyond the spa, you can go on walking tours of the nearby town of Moltrasio, try wine and cheese tastings with Passalacqua’s sommelier, play tennis or bocce, attend an alfresco movie night in the gardens, and have champagne picnics on the Giumello II, one of the hotel’s private boats (book it for a sunset cruise around the lake).

After a train ride to Florence, I was ready to jump in the car sent by the Borgo Santo Pietro staff to bring me to Siena, and Borgo. The 300-acre organic estate is so sprawling that even when it’s fully booked, you feel like you have it all to yourself. You can borrow a bike to ride through lavender fields and fruit orchards, learn to make pastas at the first-class cooking school, hike in the forest just beyond the property, unwind at an epic sound bath in the herb house (where they dehydrate herbs for the Borgo skin-care products), or swim in the Merse river at the edge of the property and slather yourself in silver detoxifying mud on its banks (a bonus spa treatment).

The spa is one of the most compelling reasons to come to Borgo. It’s gorgeous, with crumbly ancient stone walls, wood-beamed ceilings, crackling stone fireplaces, flickering candles, and cozy treatment rooms, but if the weather allows, get your treatment outside in the healing garden.

Just as at Passalacqua, the treatments—many of them bespoke—incorporate Seed to Skin Tuscany, Borgo’s clean, regeneratively farmed beauty line that’s bottled on the premises. All are made with deeply nourishing, detoxifying blends of pre- and probiotics, algae, thermal water, and herbs like calendula, rosemary, lavender, and chamomile, plus honey and sheep’s milk (all are regeneratively produced on the farm).

You can get glow-inducing custom facials, reflexology, holistic massages, body scrubs, and Ayurvedic treatments like an abhyanga massage or shirodhara. I had the Chrysalis massage in the garden, surrounded by buzzing bees, butterflies, and a breeze that carried the subtle scent of the blooming lavender nearby. You’re brushed down with a body brush for light exfoliation (for more exfoliation, add a scrub), then drenched in moisture from head to toe with a nutrient-rich honey concoction and massaged with a melting-oil candle—heaven.

Like the ingredients for Seed to Skin Tuscany, much of the food at Borgo is grown on the farm, where you can pluck asparagus, fresh herbs, apricots, and just about every other fruit or vegetable straight from the fields. The rustic Trattoria sull’Albero, built around an enormous oak tree, feels like a tree house. I’m still dreaming about the rosemary focaccia and agnolotti with ricotta, spinach, butter, and sage. At the fancier restaurant, Saporium, Borgo’s master gardener, forager, cheesemaker, baker, fermentation specialist, butcher, restaurant manager, and sommelier all come together to create absolutely unforgettable cuisine, with many of the ingredients also sourced from the farm. I had marinated red snapper with turnips and caramel-miso sauce, grilled watermelon and artichokes, and mushroom orzotto with fermented cranberries.

You sleep in grand villas, all of them with fireplaces, French doors, opulent claw-foot tubs, and private backyard terraces with pools and daybeds perfect for a lazy afternoon of reading and relaxing. The cloudlike beds are piled high with pillows, and the enormous bathrooms are stocked with more Seed to Skin (ask for the bath therapy ritual, where they fill your gigantic tub with flower petals and surround it with flickering candles and nourishing bath oils to choose from).