The hotel occupies two houses on one of the most wonderful squares in this city of wonders. In the mornings I sat on the ground floor terrace, outside the hotel’s front entrance, and tucked into poached eggs, bacon and mushrooms. As I sipped my Earl Grey and nibbled lovely, warm croissants, I looked across the piazza at the façade of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, a perfect white confection created in 1470. It is good that Divine Providence affords us these moments of near-ecstasy. We all need to feel privileged sometimes.

My billet was on the 3rd floor, up a pretty staircase (although, of course, I used the lift). There are some large and fantastical apartments on the first floor, which look out onto the piazza and which are much used by singers of popular music and the like. Room 18 – a ‘Double Deluxe’ – was still a careful and imaginative use of space. I stepped straight into the bedroom of pale grey and blue, lit by table lamps and spotlights, and with a French window to my own miniature terrace. A door opened into the large bathroom, a chamber of marble with a large tub, a WC and a bidet. Nowadays I need a walk-in shower, and here was one capacious enough to accommodate two overhead sprinklers, from which issued endless streams of efficiently controlled hot water. Within the wardrobe was that necessity for today’s traveller: a private safe.