Great Escapes Italy. The Hotel Book

La bell’Italia è per sempre. Legendary hotels and secret hideaways full of atmosphere

In Italy, art and life are entwined. This visual journey offers glimpses of rural landscapes, high culture, and divine food, all spied through the doorways and windows of the country’s most stunning hotels. Gorgeous photographs of hideaways and homesteads from Venice to Sicily offer fabulous accommodation suggestions for your next dolce vita getaway.

To travel through Italy is as close as one gets to being in paradise. For centuries, writers, artists, architects, and merchants have been drawn here, inspired by the beauty of Venice, Florence, Naples, and Rome. Countless books, paintings, poems, and sculptures are evidence of its undying appeal, and over the past 60 years, the country has become one of the world’s top travel and holiday destinations. The loveliness of Italy is, if not eternal, certainly enduring, and the easygoing and relaxed Italian lifestyle is still unrivaled.

Here, some of Italy’s most amazing landscapes and diverse regions are brought to life, like Tuscany, Umbria, the Amalfi Coast, and, no less magical, the Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily. In these mythical surroundings are legendary hotels full of atmosphere, where novels are set, movies are made, weddings are celebrated, and famous love stories consummated: Villa d’Este on Lake Como, the Pellicano Hotel in Porto Ercole, the Il San Pietro on the Amalfi Coast, and the Palazzo Margherita in Basilicata — o name just a few. Angelika Taschen also reveals where to find more secret and hidden jewels — from the Locanda Cipriani, a destination for food lovers on the island of Torcello, to the romantic Castello di Vicarello in Tuscany and the atmospheric Masseria Moroseta in Puglia.

The editor:

Angelika Taschen studied art history and German literature in Heidelberg, gaining her doctorate in 1986. Working for TASCHEN from 1987, she has published numerous titles on art, architecture, photography, design, travel, and lifestyle.

Texts by

Christiane Reiter is a freelance author based in Brussels. She studied journalism at the University of Eichstätt and worked as a travel editor for Ringier Publishing in Munich and Zurich. Later, she established the travel section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.