Best Luxury Hotels in Italy
Eight properties across four distinct Italys: Lake Como's restored belle-époque villas, the Amalfi Coast and Capri's cliffside terraces, Venice's canal-side palazzo, and Tuscany's working wine estate. Chosen against the same four criteria throughout, not ranked by price.
Italy resists a single-base trip better than almost anywhere else on this list. The eight properties here span four genuinely different Italys, and the collection is organised so a reader can combine two or three rather than choose just one.
For Lake Como
Passalacqua and Grand Hotel Tremezzo, both under the same De Santis family ownership, sit within a short drive of each other on the lake’s western shore. Passalacqua is the newer, more restrained restoration; Tremezzo carries a full belle-époque history and its own floating pool. Either makes a strong two-to-three-night base, and pairing them with a lake crossing between the two is a common, rewarding way to see both.
For the Amalfi Coast and Capri
Il Pellicano, Borgo Santandrea, and Hotel Santa Caterina each occupy a different stretch of the same dramatic coastline, from Porto Ercole’s headland to Amalfi’s cliff edge, while JK Place Capri sits across the water on the island itself, reachable only by boat. All four share the region’s terraced, cliff-built architecture, but each has a distinct scale and personality, from Il Pellicano’s founding-era glamour to Borgo Santandrea’s newer minimalism.
For a city stay
Aman Venice is the collection’s only true urban property, a restored Grand Canal palazzo with a rare private garden. It pairs naturally with a coastal or lake stay either side of a Venice visit.
For wine country
Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco sits inside a working Brunello di Montalcino estate in the Val d’Orcia, the collection’s clearest choice for a slower, vineyard-centred few days inland from the coast.
The list
8 hotels in this collection
Moltrasio, Lake Como, Italy
Passalacqua
An 18th-century villa on Lake Como's western shore, restored by one family into the hotel the industry itself voted the best in the world.
From €1,500 per night
Tremezzo, Tremezzina, Lake Como, Italy
Grand Hotel Tremezzo
A 1910 Belle Époque palace on Lake Como with a heated pool that floats on the lake itself, still run by the family that also opened Passalacqua down the shore.
From €1,000 per night
Porto Ercole, Monte Argentario, Italy
Il Pellicano
A private house party for a British aviator and an American socialite in 1965 has spent six decades quietly becoming one of Italy's most photographed clifftop hotels, without ever losing its 50-room scale.
From €750 per night
Amalfi, Amalfi Coast, Italy
Borgo Santandrea
A former 1950s seaside hotel rebuilt across nine cliffside levels above Conca dei Marini, reopened in 2022 as the first new luxury address on the Amalfi Coast in over a decade.
From €950 per night
Amalfi, Amalfi Coast, Italy
Hotel Santa Caterina
A Liberty-style villa the Gambardella family has run above the Amalfi Coast since 1904, with a cliff-carved elevator down to its own beach club and a Michelin-starred table on the terrace above.
From €850 per night
Capri, Italy
JK Place Capri
A 22-key former villa on the rocks above Marina Grande, dressed by Michele Bonan in the crisp navy-and-white language of a 1950s racing yacht.
From €750 per night
San Polo, Venice, Italy
Aman Venice
A 16th-century Grand Canal palazzo, frescoed by the Tiepolo family and fitted with a rare private garden, reopened in 2013 as Aman's first Italian address.
From €1,800 per night
Montalcino, Val d'Orcia, Italy
Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco
A 900-year-old fortified borgo turned into Italy's only private golf estate and a working Brunello di Montalcino winery, hidden inside 5,000 acres of UNESCO-listed Val d'Orcia.
From €1,350 per night