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When you tire of Bernini and Borromini, as you surely will, and when you've had your fill of old stone and time-polished marble monuments; when you've followed faithfully in the footsteps of Byron and Keats, Stendhal and Goethe, and paid your respects to the greatest living ruin in the world, you should heed the advice of St Ambrose: ‘Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more’ - when in Rome, do what the Romans do. It won't take you long to discover that what the Romans do best is leave Rome to the tourists whenever they possibly can. As St Ambrose suggests, theirs is an example well worth following.

There are two generally agreed routes out of Rome. To the sea or to the country, the choice is yours. High in the Sabine Hills, some 40 kilometres north east of the eternal city and set on slopes sharply forested with speartip cypress and softly shaded with olive groves you will find the Borgo Paraelios. Surrounded by twenty-five acres of Tuscan-like parkland this delightful nineteenth-century country villa is one of Rome's best-kept secrets. It may not be the easiest place to find - even second-timers admit to a wrong turn or two before finally swinging into the Borgo's driveway - but wrong turnings, gear-grating three-point turns and the inevitable back-trackings are a small price to pay. Here is a hotel close enough to the city to make daily visits on the hotel shuttle a convenient alternative to city-centre accommodation, yet far enough away to ensure a serene, Vespa-free tranquility. With only 12 rooms and two suites, however, advance booking is essential at this family-owned retreat. Here you'll find private and public rooms rich in period furnishings, with paintings and engravings by Canaletto, Gottuso and Attardi, ancient tapestries, beamed ceilings, grand stone fireplaces and burnished terracotta floors. To make life even easier for guests wishing to visit the city, the Borgo Paraelios also keeps an apartment near the Spanish Steps in the centre of Rome, where the tired and the footsore can take a break from the inevitable round of shopping and sightseeing.

Of course, if you land at Fiumicino airport, there is no need to visit the city at all. Simply drive for twenty minutes to the coast at Ladispoli-Palo Laziale and take up residence at La Posta Vecchia. Once owned by the oil billionaire John Paul Getty, this seventeenth-century villa is a must for art lovers, as a significant proportion of Getty's museum-quality antiques and art collection is displayed in the hotel's spacious, flower-filled public rooms, and in its nine bedrooms and eight suites. Here, in profusion, you will find rare Venetian lamps, priceless ceramics, plush Fortuny drapes, marble statuary, time-darkened Gobelin tapestries and priceless sixteenth-century furnishings, each superbly-appointed bedroom equipped with wallowing bathtubs of pink or Carrara marble.

But that is not all. When Getty bought the property he discovered in the course of his renovations that the house had been built over the remains of a much earlier Roman villa dating back to the time of Nero and the Emperor Julius Caesar who is believed to have stayed there. Now restored and sensitively incorporated into the fabric of the house, its surviving low stone walls and intricately-patterned mosaic floor offer guests the chance to admire ancient Rome without even setting foot outside the front door. Indeed, with its sumptuous interiors, secluded gardens and small private beach, La Posta Vecchia is the very devil to leave.

If, however, you can summon up the necessary resolve to venture further afield, you'll discover La Posta Vecchia is an ideal base for exploring the coast or visiting notable archaeological sites like the sixth-century Etruscan ruins of nearby Cerveteri. Finally, when you make your booking, ask for a bedroom facing the sea and you'll fall asleep to the sound of waves crashing on the rocky shore. Far more comforting, you'll find, than the late-night din of traffic on Rome's echo-chamber cobbled streets.

One hundred and fifty kilometres north of Palo-Laziale, on Italy's Tyrennhian coast, is Il Pellicano, a name that never fails to prompt nods of recognition and murmurs of familiarity wherever you happen to be in Italy, indeed wherever you are in the world. "Ah, Porto Ercole," people say knowingly; and Il Pellicano's proximity to this famous fortified port (where the painter Caravaggio is buried) is as sweet a coupling as pasta and pesto. Owned by Roberto Scio, father of La Posta Vecchia's director Harry Scio, tucked away between stands of pine and cypress and levered into the steep rocky slopes of Monte Argentario, this vine-wrapped, cliff-edge villa offers all the welcoming comforts and character of a private home. You'll feel more a family friend than anonymous guest. This is underpinned by a corps of dedicated, ruthlessly efficient staff whose sole aim, it seems, is to make your stay memorable in every regard.

Scattered over the slopes of the estate and reached along stone paths that wind through lush terraced gardens, Il Pellicano's 29 guest rooms and four suites are also more home-from-home than hotel. They are arranged as two- and three-bedroom ochre-walled cottages, each coolly tiled, comfortably accoutered and elegantly secluded, each with a private balcony or terrace overlooking the rugged Tyrennhian coastline. At Il Pellicano it won't take you long to discover that la dolce vita isn't just the title of a film.

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