Golf Club Biella - Italy

Golf Club Biella is without a doubt one of the finest courses in Italy, but it is not easy to get to, requiring a zigzagging drive up the mountain known as the Colina Serra above the small town of Magnano, 40 miles east of Turin. The course showcases the forests of birch that cover the mountains of northern Italy's Lake Country, creating thousands of frail, ghostly figures in the twilight. The course is popularly known as Le Betulle, or "the birch." Despite its elevated setting, the course has ample proportions, with water hazards, rocky outcroppings, and crowned greens. The par-fives are particularly strong, and there are five of them altogether.

Milano Golf Club - Italy

Milano Golf Club is one of the quiet, unsung treasures of golf in Italy, set in the outskirts of Milan in the great Park of Monza. The Park was once the preserve of the Hapsburgs, rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but is now better known as the site of the famous Grand Prix racetrack. The course, like many of the rarefied courses of northern Italy's Lake Country, was designed by an Englishman, in this case Charles Blandford. The fairways are wonderfully secluded, weaving through the mature forest of oak and beech, and the bunkering is first-rate, with large islands of sand flashed up around the small greens. The clubhouse, built in the 1950s, has a distinctly Modernist influence with its rectilinear slabs of concrete. The original clubhouse behind the 13th green now serves as a restaurant, and was once the site of the royal pheasant house.