I appear to have died. It's rather pleasant. Chubby cherubs with garlands of flowers are zipping around my head, lifting me up through a splendid Baroque cathedral towards a radiant sky.

For five seconds, in the surreal half-life following heavy slumber, I float into the heavens. Then my 3am trance - fuelled by reckless overindulgence on Giorgio Primo chianti - subsides. I am still alive. The cherubs have returned to the mesmerising 17th-century fresco above my bed.

It's just one of the multitude of exquisite original artworks adorning Italy's latest luxury hotel. The Four Seasons in Florence, which opened last month, straddles two Renaissance palaces on the fringe of the historic centre and boasts a tasteful riot of frescoes, bas-reliefs and stuccoes from the past five centuries.

After a seven-year, £48 million facelift, freshly laundered gods, angels, aristocrats and cardinals gaze down on the well-heeled guests. “It's a masterpiece,” said Gianluca Tenti, who has written a book on the restoration. “No other hotel in the world has comparable artwork, and lets you sleep or take a bath under such magnificent frescoes. It's a unique taste of the city's art and culture.”

The 14 best breaks for art lovers in 2008

Join the cultural revolution with our correspondent’s guide to the best art tours, exhibitions and creative breaks of the year

• Art attack in Los Angeles

The wildest art on earth

The most beautiful works of art merge with nature and merit the journey to see them. Once seen, never forgotten

• Europe's biggest art show lights up Cumbria

Background

• Gauguin and the Pacific Isles

• Dali's spiritual home in Spain

• Dali's bohemian Barcelona

• Italy captured on canvas

Related Internet Links

• More holidays for art and culture fans

Related Links

• Where to rough it in a luxury hotel

It sounds remarkable. And it begs the question: is it now possible to visit the cradle of the Renaissance and sample the prolific cultural banquet without leaving your hotel?

It's a comfortable challenge at the Four Seasons. More urban resort than hotel, its palaces bookend Florence's largest private garden. The 11 acres have returned to the 19th century with statues and rare botanic species, drizzled through a romantic web of lawns, copses and hillocks.

My tour of the self-proclaimed “living museum of art history” began in Palazzo Della Gherardesca's 15th-century courtyard. Its epic bas-relief of classical images charts events from the life of first owner, Bartolomeo Scala, chancellor to shy, retiring Lorenzo Il Magnifico. It's good stuff, with wall-to-wall bare buttocks, a nice bit of animal carnage and what looks like a Greek orgy. And that's just for starters.

The ceilings of surrounding porticoes are riddled with hundreds of ornate chalk panels leading to a tiny domed chapel. It's now a reading room, covered with frescoes of the Adoration and Nativity by Flemish Mannerist, Stradanus. I spent an hour transfixed by the images. And then I saw the business centre.

Don't laugh. It produced the most lyrical email of my life. Every single inch is splattered with the works of Agostino Ciampelli. Squillionaires checking their share portfolios can look up to see Count Gaddo Della Gherardesca renouncing worldly wealth for the priesthood.

Fast forward a century and theatrical Baroque frescoes adorn the first-floor suites, where beauty starts from £2,600 a night without breakfast. They're as eye-popping as the price suggests.

The Royal Suite has original ceramic floor tiles, along with a fresco of previous resident, Leo XI - the “Lightning Pope”, who snuffed it after 26 days in the hot seat. You can even doze off underneath Il Volterrano's Rococo work, The Human Mind's Blindness Lit by Truth. Individual areas of the palaces preserve different eras. Late Baroque? Try the family portraits in the ballroom. Nineteenth century? Easy. The Volterrano suite's exquisite Chinese wallpaper or the banqueting hall's vaulted ceiling.

But as Gianluca Tenti stresses, what makes the Four Seasons so distinct is that for virtually all its life the palazzo belonged to wealthy yet ordinary people, not grand nobility such as the Medicis. And frankly, if you come to Florence, you want at least a glimpse of its blockbuster historical sights.

So yes, I did leave my hotel. For three hours' guided speed sightseeing: an intoxicating blur of symmetrical architecture, big domes and marble six packs. The Renaissance? Not bad. But hell, it was heaving. So I retreated to the Four Seasons' cocoon, where even my massage reeked of medieval artistry. The garden spa uses products from Santa Maria Novella, one of the world's oldest pharmacies founded by 13th-century Dominican friars. Monks who moisturise. How very Italian.

After a final night's gluttony on the Tuscan tasting menu of the chef Vito Mollica, where each dish arrives with a vintage vino, I lay awake massaging my distended stomach. Just me and the cherubs. The most beautiful insomnia of my life.

Times recommends

• The Green Spaces Travel Awards, 2008 - the winners
• Britain's 12 best winter walks
• The insiders' guide to bohemian Paris