The best places in Italy according to the expert
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Founder of Italian specialist Bellini Travel Emily FitzRoy tells us about her all-time favourite hotels from Lake Como to Porto Ercole, how to escape the crowds in Venice and where to find the best spaghetti al limone on the Amalfi Coast.
Oliver PilcherYour favourite classic hotel?
'Italy is weighed down by grande dames and this makes it almost impossible for me to choose from. However, if I really had to pick one it would be the Grand Hotel Tremezzo on Lake Como. Firstly, if Wes Anderson had chosen Italy rather than Hungary for The Grand Hotel Budapest, this is where he would have made the film. I’ve twisted the arms of numerous clients over the years who’ve asked for small, cosy boutique hotels to base themselves on Lake Como and stay at the Tremezzo instead. And I cannot tell you a) how happy this makes them, b) how relieved they are that they listened to us and, c) how often they call on arrival and ask if they cancel the rest of their trip around Italy and just stay put.'
'For unadulterated Slim Aarons classic Italian chic, then it’s a toss-up between the Le Sirenuse in Positano and Hotel Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole. Both on the sea, both run by the most glamorous people I know who somehow, through osmosis, have spread their own unique sense of style into every detail of their hotels. From the rosemary hedge at the Pellicano, which if I close my eyes I can smell as if I were walking up from the sea, to the bread that Antonio Sersale has flown in daily from Paris to make breakfast at the Sirenuse so delicious.'
One thing you’ve never told anyone about your travels?
'I often commit the cardinal sin of visiting a city in mid-August. There is something perversely intoxicating about spending a night in Florence, which transforms into a supremely efficient restaurant-quality oven in the summer. It gives me double the excuse to have an extra-long siesta. Then you wake and open your bedroom window at the AdAstra (the father of the owner, Betty, makes the best fireworks in Italy) and – wham – the hot dry heat smacks you right in the face. Wandering through the empty streets of the Oltrarno in search of an ice-cold beer, a bowl of olives and a gelato for my daughters, we find most, but not all, of our favourite places closed 'per Ferragosto' My own family holidays are complete and utter chaos. I book flights for the wrong days, head to Italian cities in the searing heat of August, forget to renew passports and basically do the opposite of everything I tell my clients to do.'
Getty ImagesYour favourite small and secret hotel?
'The Grand Hotel La Sirena on the island of Filicudi. First off, I can hardly believe I’m writing about it, however to get there requires a considerable effort which I hope will put some readers off immediately. Filicudi is the penultimate island of the Aeolian archipelago and requires a day of planes, buses, ferries and finally a scooter (to bring your suitcase) to the tiny fishing village of Pecorini a Mare. The Grand Hotel is the beating heart of the village during the summer and where everything happens. Owner Sergio was a bit of a groover in Sixties Rome. I think he still lives in Lucio Fontana’s old studio during the winter and commissions young artists to come to the island each summer to paint a large mural on the exterior of the hotel. There are only a handful of bedrooms, modest to say the least, but in my eyes perfect, with their tiled floors and wooden shutters. This also appeals to my friends, especially the radical-chic bunch from Rome who have been coming here for years for a dose of La Vita Dura (the Hard Life). There is no fresh water on the island and the main diet consists of tomatoes, capers and, as far as I can make, vast quantities of cigarettes which arrive on the morning ferry to a round of applause from the villagers. On the ground floor of La Sirena is the restaurant; it’s where I go in the morning with my girls to feed them a freshly baked ciambelle (mini doughnut) and orange juice (the fruit picked from the trees that morning) and where I return to in the evening to meet friends for a cocktail and watch the children set up their stalls in the piazza below to flog sea shells and foraged aloe and seaweed to unsuspecting visitors. And if I don’t feel like swimming, La Sirena is where I could easily sit and watch the world go by really very slowly.'
Getty ImagesA great little find away from the crowds?
I guarantee if you give me a day I can show you a Venice without seeing another visitor. My great little place away from the crowds is the island of Pellestrina in the lagoon; a strip of land on the far side of the Lido known to locals as fisherman’s island. Da Celeste has one of the prettiest terraces in Italy and, apart from yacht owners in the know and a certain French president who brought his mistresses here, you really won’t see another tourist. The fishing boats moor on either side of the restaurant and bring crates of fresh mussels, langoustine and weird little fish from the lagoon which moments later appear on your table as a fritto misto, a superlative spaghetti alle vongole or a huge John dory baked in salt. If your pockets aren’t deep enough to arrive by water taxi, then enjoy the few hours it takes to get here from Venice, which involves a vaporetto to the island of the Lido, then hopping on a kitsch little bus which drives onto a ferry that connects with Pellestrina. An altogether pretty perfect day.'
If you could have one feast right now?
'I would arrive on my friend Pippo’s wooden gozzo boat to the floating pier at Lo Scoglio on the Amalfi Coast, having spent the morning swimming around the islands of Li Galli. The owners of Lo Scoglio, the De Santis’, are my Italian family and I have been coming here for years, both winter and summer, staying in the cheap little bedrooms upstairs (don’t tell a soul) and thanking my lucky stars that the late, great Franco Sersale introduced me to them so many moons ago. Having hugged and kissed every member of staff including the yellow labrador, I’ll settle into my table in the far corner on the right which looks out onto the pebbly public beach. The scene taking place down below is straight out of an Alberto Morrocco painting – large Neapolitan mammas in impressively sturdy bikinis sitting three to a sun lounger, more often than not with a nut-brown baby on a lap, a panino of tomato and mozzarella in one hand and a cigarette in the other. If I’m lucky, I’ll catch part of their conversation – it's nearly always about food. Now to lunch itself... as I enjoy a glass of crisp, white Falanghina and munch on a crisp "pillow of heaven" (as my daughters call them) – little parcels of deep-fried mozzarella with a salty anchovy sneakily tucked away – my mind will have turned to the very serious business of what pasta to have. Will it be the spaghetti con zucchini which has made this village famous? Will it be the ravioli with yellow tomatoes? For me it has to be the spaghetti al limone – simple yet completely unforgettable and never, ever to be replicated with the same success. The lemons picked that morning by Peppino and driven down the mountain in his little Ape, along with all the other vegetables which are currently being prepped in copper pans in the fabulous blue-and-white-tiled kitchen by Margherita and Tommaso, and with some luck a basket or two of cherries. Really when I think of pure undiluted happiness, I close my eyes and imagine this lunch.'
The book that inspired you to travel?
'Jan Morris' Venice – the way she described every tiny nuance of the Venetians; the way they wave with their fingers curled like a claw, rather than outstretched; the way they talk with a soft Z at the end of each syllable; the way they fled from the Huns across the marshy, mosquito-ridden lagoon to found the city in the eighth century. And some wonderfully amusing facts such as that the 15th-century playboy doge Michel Steno kept 400 horses whose coats were all dyed yellow. Many moons ago when Bellini was in its infancy, I had dinner with Jan Morris in Venice. She knew my great uncle Johnny and they had lived together as friends in Venice after World War II when Jan was still James and writing the first edition of this wonderful book. Her love of Venice was undiminished and, despite being well into her eighties, she had risen at dawn that very morning and walked all the way from St Mark's down to the Arsenale to catch the city in its first light. I very much want to be like her in my dotage and this served as a stern lesson never to be complacent of my good fortune to have been able to spend so much time in Venice.'
Getty ImagesThe film whose location blew you away?
'The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa which bucks the trend at being almost as good, if not better, than the novel. The director Visconti captured the dark heart of Sicily; the dust, the heat and those ghostly villages you still find in the centre of the island when driving from Palermo to Catania. Plus I could have sworn I’ve been offered a granita by Claudia Cardinale’s daughter on at least one occasion.'
Getty ImagesA place you fell in love?
'I know I should say the island of Ponza on my honeymoon but for a pure, unadulterated holiday romance it was on Elba aged 15. I was on an Italian exchange and I fell off my scooter. He stopped to help me and find a tissue for my grazed knees. His name was Guido and he had a tattoo of a butterfly on his shoulder. Oh the sheer happiness when two months later the phone rang in my parents’ house and I heard him say he was in South Kensington. Alas, we all know holiday romances do not travel and sadly the Barbour-clad fellow in ironed jeans (with the crease down the front) who greeted me at the Tube was nothing like the Adonis I’d fallen head over heels with on that beautiful green and hilly island.'
Which form of transport gives you a spring in your step?
There is nothing quite like climbing up the steps to board the Orient Express from Paris to Venice – hopefully a little tipsy from a Martini or two at the Hemingway Bar at The Ritz. It’s the smell more than anything that I remember. The charcoal burners at the end of each carriage are still used to heat the cabins and that in turn warms the cherry-wood panels in my cabin to create a scent that is completely intoxicating. It’s impossible to describe and that – combined with a bar that never closes and the fact you can wind the window right down in the morning when you wake up and just lie in bed under an old-fashioned woollen blanket and watch the Swiss Alps, listening to the cow bells and drinking tea – is enough to give me a spring in my step for the year.'
Getty ImagesThe best shop you discovered on your travels?
'Gianni Basso in Venice – 20 years on and he still hasn’t got a phone, let alone a website, and if he doesn’t like the look of you he flicks the open sign to 'chiuso' and takes me out to lunch. The best hand-printed stationery on the planet: bookplates for our clients; writing paper for me.'
Getty ImagesA song that reminds you of holidays?
'Andrea Bocelli 'Con Te Partirò' – yelling it at the top of our voices at the feast of Santa Maria della Costa in Levanto on the Cinque Terre – easily the most unglamorous town of the Cinque Terre but, in my eyes, the most charming.'
The destination you want to visit next?
'These quirky little art foundations you find throughout Italy, such as the Fondazione Cirulli in San Lazzaro di Savena, focusing on 20th-century works.'
Your holiday look?
'Emporio from Carla Sersale – my dresses are almost threadbare.'
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