I first visited Sirmione on Lake Garda in the 1980s. I had my first Italian ice cream. I bought my first loafers and had my first swim in a lake. I revelled (in a low-key, teenagerish fashion) at the laid-back elegance of the Italians and the pearlscent waters so beloved of Catullus and scores of well-to-do Italians since. Returning last August I wondered if the north Italian resort would prove as memorable for our three, more world-weary daughters.

First impressions were good. ‘Posh….’, was the chorus as we drew up outside our hotel, the Villa Cortine. Gates swung open to reveal a moss-clad Neptune. The magic seeped back. This is a classic, damn-fashion hotel. There are no designer flourishes, but what it lacks in boutiquery the Cortine makes up for with an insouicant glamour – marble-lined salons, tail-coated waiters and romantic gardens – that is quintessentially Italian.

There’s no kids’ club or paddling pool but our children (aged 11, 9 and 5) were welcomed everywhere with customary Italian grace – in the gilded library in dripping costumes or splashing on their inflatable whale in the pool. They adored the secretive garden with its sinister statues as much as breakfast on the terrace overlooking the lake. They stayed up for suppers under the stars when the chef produced silver-domed spaghetti with butter for them.

As the heat shimmered we slid in to a lazy routine. We pottered in to town for an ice cream and spent afternoons lazing by the pool. The children loved the canopied ‘train’ which trundles up to Catullus’s lakeview villa. We took a steamer to the Island of Garda where the Borghese family built a palace so vast they were almost bankrupted. We went to picturesque Salo where Mussolini made his last stand. In Mantua, seat of the fabulously rich Gonzaga family, horse steak was on the menu and the girls sampled their first squat loo (double ‘yuck’.) Verona with its Romeo and Juliet balcony is nearby and the looming magnificence of its cathedral even impressed the girls.

But their happiest memory is of swimming in the lake. The hotel has a private jetty and clad in rubber shoes (slippery rocks) the girls paddled happily in the shallows. One day there was a shriek – ‘I’ve seen a snake!’ – as a silvery watersnake flashed past. Forget Shakespeare or Il Duce. A snake is the stuff of memories.

Hotel Villa Cortine, 0039 030 9905890. www.hotelvillacortine.com.