Garza Blanca, 4.5 miles south of town, is a pleasant elegant retreat on a hillside by the beach.

The elegant retreat of Frederick the Great's Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam is characterized as "the end of Frederick's search for present laughter."

Here she reviews Hayfield Manor, an elegant retreat just a short distance from the city centre.

Blacksmiths, millwrights, masons, stone cutters, painters and artists created an elegant retreat using iron and stone; the high ceilings were painted with murals.

In its early years it was used as an "elegant retreat for wealthy Los Angeles area sportsmen," who make their way to Glendale, California, and then take a stage to Tujunga and the lodge.

Set within an 11th-century hamlet 15 miles from Siena, Castel Monastero is an elegant retreat overlooking Chianti vineyards.

And a growing range of elegant, rural retreats and A-list eateries are attracting a range of visitors beyond the party package crowd.

Troutbeck One of the most elegant retreats in Dutchess County, New York, is the oddly named but charming 442-acre estate known as Troutbeck.

Now converted into well-appointed lodges, these elegant retreats offer visitors the chance to overnight in a nostalgic world of scones, croquet and hot-water bottles slipped between the sheets.

Try a flirting course at The Grange (01983 867644, www.thegrangebythesea.com), an elegant retreat in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight.