Bellapocalypse Now
How Dua Lipa's Italian honeymoon hotels -- from Palermo to Positano -- celebrate about the Italy's most glamorous eras.
Somewhere in the middle of last week's heat wave and during my early-morning bed rot and doom scroll, before the day could make demands, I stumbled onto a photo of Dua Lipa leaping across a bed. And I'll say it: she got me levitating.
I knew that room. Dua and newly minted hubby Callum Turner were honeymooning in The Sofia, Suite 4 (I believe) of Palazzo Margherita. She was pure joy and didn’t I know it! Well, maybe she was thinking of Callum but I was thinking of my favorite slice of yesteryear Italy.
I kept on scrolling, and it kept on happening. Dua in Villa Igiea. Dua in a cove near Positano. Hotel Locarno. San Domenico. Il Pellicano. La Posta Vecchia. Hotel after hotel after hotel I knew personally. Her entire honeymoon was a love letter to Italy: the iconic and the secluded, the city grande dames and the seaside hideaways, almost all family-run, every one of them doing Italian hospitality the way it’s supposed to be done. And everyone celebrating an era of Italian splendour.
So this is my love letter to her love letter. Because whether she knew it or not, Dua Lipa didn’t just honeymoon. She unleashed a full Bellapocalypse.
The Bellapocalypse
Along with being the happy misspelling my iPhone made while butchering Belle Époque in dictation, it perfectly describes a honeymoon whose hotels are Italy’s most iconic representations of fabulous eras from the Grand Tour to la Dolce Vita —- all with a heavy smattering of Belle Époque. Here they are: the ten hotels where Dua and Callum stayed and celebrated, from wedding through honeymoon.
Palazzo Margherita, Bernalda. Ever since I visited, I have not been able to keep quiet about how much I love Palazzo Margherita — this is the hotel that inspired my Unpacked in the first place - read the full swoon here, but in a nutshell: Coppola bought an 1890s palazzo in his grandfather’s hometown and made a hotel that feels like being adopted by a small town for a weekend. Thank you, Dua, for staying here. And if you decide to stop by, please tell Rossella, the GM, that I sent you.
Villa Igiea, Palermo. My favorite hotel in Palermo, full stop. Built at the end of the 1800s for the Florios — Palermo's shipping-and-tuna dynasty — it's the rise of a family told in Liberty style architecture, aka Italy’s Art Nouveau: a grand dame sitting right on the water, with a great room carved entirely in wood, a bar carved the same way, exactly as it was the day it opened. Watch The Lions of Sicily to get a vibe on the family dynasty. Or just grab a stool inside at the time-piece Igiea Terrazzo bar.
Villa Treville, Positano. This is Bellapocalypse in one property: born an 18th-century estate, rebooted as a hotel in 1925, then swallowed whole by director Franco Zeffirelli, who spent the 1960s dressing it into his “dream world” - part set design, part séance. Callas hid here. Nureyev hid here. Liz and Dick hid here. Terraces, hidden pools, a beach club, gardens tumbling down the cliff like they’re late for the beach.
San Domenico Palace, Taormina. The 14th-century convent reborn as a hotel in 1896, when a prince grafted a Liberty-style grand hotel onto the cloisters. San Domenico palace may have become notorious thanks to White Lotus Season 2 hotel; but the Grand Tour knew it first - Oscar Wilde, D.H. Lawrence, Igor Stravinsky, Elizabeth Taylor. *Now part of the Four Seasons collection, San Domenico Palace still maintains personable, Italian hospitality.
Hotel Locarno, Rome. In my opinion, Locarno is the most interesting choice on the whole itinerary. Everyone comes to Rome for its ancient, Renaissance, Baroque history but the Locarno celebrates a Roman era no one really remembers: post-Unification Italy and Rome as it a capital, reinventing itself yet again at the century’s turn. Opened in 1925, Locarno is a period piece down to the furniture, and somehow still off-radar after a hundred years of good press. Like Palazzo Margherita, this is a spot director Wes Anderson loves.
Palazzo Gattini, Matera. When I made the mistake of visiting Matera on a 44°C day, I also found myself in Palazzo Gattini's Le Bubbole, lapping up a cocktail (I know, I know, I needed water). The late-Baroque palazzo claims prime position at the highest point of the Sassi, the prehistoric cave city carved into the limestone. Just 20 beautifully preserved rooms, no wonder it housed James Bond himself: Daniel Craig during the No Time to Die shoot. Visit in the fall or the spring, not August.
Il Pellicano, Porto Ercole. This is a 1960s baby, whose entire mythology - Slim Aarons, Charlie Chaplin - is devoted to conjuring the dolce vita vibe. Full disclosure: I edited Issimo, the Pellicano Group’s magazine, so I know this one from the inside. Il Pellicano capitalizing on its hard-to-get to allure and sexy, turn-back-the-clock Dolce Vita glamour. That’s what it was built for, and Marie-Louise Sciò, hostess extraordinaire, has packaged it in the prettiest bow in Italy.
La Posta Vecchia, Ladispoli. ll Pellicano's sister property, and the perfect honeymoon finale: a 17th-century seaside villa just north of Rome that was J. Paul Getty's Roman beach escape with an actual Roman villa still sitting underneath it. Just 18 rooms and a pool somewhere between Gatsby and Hearst.If Il Pellicano gives you glamour, La Posta Vecchia gives you quiet romance. Dua and Callum took the Medici Suite, of course, a vast sea-facing room with a pink marble tub in its bathroom. Both hotels are all about sunbathing and indoor site-seeing, if you know what I mean.
Villa Paola, Tropea. You got me, Dua. I had neither stayed at nor even heard of Villa Paola before the photo dump, and it looks good: eleven rooms in a restored 16th-century monastery, pink-hued and wrapped in terraced gardens, looking out over Tropea. History buffs, Tropea has the best origin story: legend says Hercules established it while heading home from his Labors, taking a well-earned beat on this coast, and later these are the waters where Odysseus threaded Scylla and Charybdis.
Bonus: and if you’ve read this far, one more.
There was an eleventh address, technically a wedding address - Villa Valguarnera in Bagheria, an 18th-century villa held by the same family for centuries. And I know it well. In 2018 I organized a forty-person dinner there for the Vatican patrons, and what was scheduled as an hour with the owner, Princess Vittoria Alliata, became a full day talking about Dalì, humanism, botanical gardens, raising kids, Dolce & Gabbana and cooking.
The Princess is a tried-and-true storyteller - she’s the woman who translated The Lord of the Rings into Italian as a teenager. Whose key-shaped villa was an aerial reference during the Allied bombing of Sicily. Who left for Morocco, came home years later to find the villa occupied by squatters of the distinctly Sicilian variety, and took it back. And I’ll get to all of that in another post.
For now: auguri, Dua and Callum. You honeymooned through the best of what Italy does and you got us levitating.
Baci,
Erica
I can't wait to visit these hotels. I stayed at the Hotel Locarno in May and it was amazing. I have been to Italy many times and never Rome. I now love Rome! The location was perfect - on a quiet street but walkable to so many things. My room w/balcony was something out of a movie. The staff was amazing. Especially the front desk. I can't wait to go back there.
Was just mentioning today that I love all of these hotels — and love Dua for repping them hard. Such a fun roundup.