Villaggio Eni, a holiday resort in the Venetian Dolomites, is where traces of Italy’s optimistic past live on. It has its origins in La Dolce Vita, the country’s post-war golden age, a time of Vespas, Tecno sofa beds and TV game shows. In 1959, 13 per cent of Italians went on holiday; by the 1960s, that figure had doubled.

New motorways, Fiats and resorts catered to a prosperous nation on the move, while large companies, buoyed by benevolence and new profits, embarked on a corporate paternalism that saw the creation of holiday villages for their employees all over Italy. Eni was, and still is, one of the largest energy companies in Italy, and here, between 1954-1957, Eni chairman Enrico Mattei and Italian architect Edoardo Gellner dreamed up a holiday retreat like no other.