The day before Italy’s Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino, reopened to the public, I sat on the hotel’s magnificent terrace at 6 a.m., sipping a cup of tea and watching Portofino wake up. The hilltop Italian resort presides over the Bay of Portofino, which, that morning, hosted two moored yachts and a handful of sleepy sailboats. A moped zigged and zagged up the vertical road to the hotel, the driver’s white helmet occasionally dipping out of view behind landscaped hedges and weeping trees. A sleek black Mercedes-Benz brought guests up to the hotel, followed closely by an ambitious biker. But mostly, the tableau was unmoving, as I watched the water to see if anyone would dive off their boat for a morning swim in the bay.
My post on the picturesque terrace is “why people came to Splendido originally,” says Martin Brudnizki, the celebrated hotel designer who just finished an extensive renovation of the illustrious Belmond hotel. “It’s all about the tables along the balustrade, because you feel so close to the view.” The terrace overlooking Portofino is what also brought Brudnizki and his partner here for the first time, on a vacation, in 2017.
Over the last five years—while designing T+L It List–winning hotels, including London’s Broadwick Soho, Le Grand Mazarin in Paris, and The Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City—he has reimagined Belmond’s “Grand Dame of the Italian Riviera,” as the LVMH-owned hospitality brand calls it. Splendido just reopened on June 7 after its seasonal closure. (The hotel remained operational during the renovation, though for shorter seasons to accommodate construction.) Brudnizki redesigned Splendido’s 52 rooms and common areas, including the just-opened Baratta Sedici bar, making the place look “lighter, happier, and more Genoese.”
The interiors now reflect the idyllic last-frame-in-a-movie surroundings. “We took the crafts, the style, and the materiality of this specific region and added it to the hotel,” Brudnizki says. That meant incorporating details like hand-painted walls and ceilings, lace curtains, headboards upholstered in patterned fabric sourced 20 minutes away, and all the florals and embroidery travelers expect from the most luxurious hotel on the Italian Riviera.
Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino
The crowning achievement of the redesign is Villa Beatrice, Belmond’s newest private villa, opening at the end of this month (price on request). The three-story villa, blending Gothic Revival with Art Nouveau style, feels very much like a four-suite castle with a separate one-bedroom stone cottage, pool, gardens, and private beachfront lounge area. The palazzo has original ceiling frescoes, arched windows, a bar, and multiple terraces, one of which faces the Bay of Portofino as it meets the Bay of Paraggi.
“The painted work that we’re doing everywhere, on the ceiling, on the wall, it’s typical of this region,” Brudnizki says of both the villa, located a five-minute stroll away, and the main hotel. “Portofino was a poor fishing village, and the way they made themselves look more grand was the paint on the buildings.” The hotel first opened in 1902, but it, too, has humble beginnings: as a 16th-century Benedictine monastery.
Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino
Though there are still finishing touches to come, “what you see now is the full look,” Brudnizki says. When I visited for the opening, I went to a lavish dinner party celebrating the next era of Splendido, where actor and musician Jeff Goldblum, who told me he gave the hotel “10 out of 10 Goldblums,” performed a set on the piano in front of the pool. (Even the pool, flanked by red-and-white umbrellas, was dolled up for the occasion with tea lights floating on the water.)
Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino
What struck me wasn’t that it was, indeed, the poshest party I’ve been to in quite some time, but that it felt like the kind of magic you could have on any night at Splendido. I got ready for the evening at the new Dior Spa—the first permanent one by the French brand in Italy—with a facial that used Japanese Kobido massage to sculpt my face into party-ready shape. I started the evening with a Negroni, made with Portofino Dry Gin, at Baratta Sedici. The enchanting new bar—with its floral throw pillows and elaborate chandeliers—made me feel like I should have passed through a wardrobe to gain entry. Brudnizki used graniglia—“basically terrazzo with mosaic details in it”—on the floor and walls, which mingles with a back-lit bar and hand-painted detailing.
“This property now looks the way it always should have,” Brudnizki says. “If you took this look and moved this hotel, let’s say, to Rome or Venice, it’s wrong. It works, specifically, right here.”
Out on the terrace, Vladi Gatto, the piano player who has been with Splendido since the ‘90s, serenaded us through a dinner of roasted artichokes and fresh-caught seabream, with bud vases lining the long table set for 80. And the hotel, with the gardens illuminated by soft light and the Ligurian sea twinkling, was ready to host.
Nightly rates at Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, start at $1,500, and you can book your room at belmond.com.
