Masseria Degli Ulivi - Noto

Delightful hotel in a rural setting, within an easy drive of Ragusa, Noto and Siracusa, so a good place to base oneself in SE Sicily and/or just chill out. A good restaurant serving a wide range of local dishes in a pretty refined manner. Excellent buffet breakfast catering for most tastes. Staff in the restaurant were superb. Rooms were perfectly good but unremarkable.

This is a well marketed Masseria in beautiful countryside close to Noto and the other major centres of the Val di Noto. Its immediate attractions are its large and well-designed swimming pool and tennis court and the peaceful setting along a quiet lane way. But we enjoyed the excellent food in the restaurant most of all. Excellent food is important because although Noto isn’t far away, we decided that the winding roads at night weren’t compatible with drinking wine! Not only was the food good but the service was exceptional from our two main waiters, Marco and Gabriele. Their knowledge of the wine on offer was excellent. And they were both personable and helpful with our attempts at Italian! Breakfast is excellent too with a huge display of freshly baked cakes and pastries as well as eggs, cheeses and meats. That said, our travel agent made a mistake with the bookings and we were put in a standard room. We’d been travelling in Italy for six weeks when we arrived at the Masseria and we needed space and a private place to relax. The standard room was so small we couldn’t pass each other and there was no where to store large suit cases. The standard room might be fine for visitors coming with hand luggage from somewhere in Italy for an extended weekend, but totally unsuited a week’s stay for international travellers. There seemed to be no effective air-conditioning either. The bed was bouncy and there was only one additional pillow. Some rooms are up stairs. The. Masseria seems to have been built as a hotel, and not as its publicity says with rooms which would have been used for agricultural purposes in the past. It’s attractive but the place lacks a sense of tradition or “soul” compared with Fattorias or Masserias I’ve stayed in previously in the Mezzogiorno. But, good for the food, the fantastic service and the swimming pool and don’t have a lot of luggage!