It fills me with joy when someone not just builds a hotel, but really has a knack for it, even a signature, an eye for it. When someone has intuition for the fact that an excellent establishment is by no means just accommodation, but must stand for an attitude to life. Because the perfect hotel feels good: consciously, subconsciously, through all senses.
The carefully renovated country estate Monaci delle Terre Nere in Sicily, about halfway between Taormina and Catania at the foot of Mount Etna, is exemplary in this respect: a manor house in traditional Sicilian architecture, plus a few outbuildings with a more rugged appearance. Some of the centuries-old room walls made of natural stone are not plastered, almost black in contrast to the snow-white bed linen, the furniture is a combination of old and new, there are delicate touches of contemporary design everywhere. The mixture is perfect, the arrangement ideal. What has emerged within eight years here has become a genuine ‘high-end feel-good hotel’ for me. Read more