Top 10: the best five-star hotels in Florence
An expert guide to the best five-star hotels in Florence, including the top places to stay for sumptuous suites, private pools, fine-dining restaurants, superb service, tranquil spas, city views, renowned cookery schools, and bags of historic character, in locations close to the Arno, the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo, the Uffizi Gallery and the Piazzale Michelangelo.
Thanks to a commanding position on the River Arno, right next to the Ponte Vecchio, the Portrait Firenze is possibly the best located hotel in Florence. The modern Italian designer interiors in greys, creams, whites and browns are elegant and inoffensive. Rugs cover wooden floors and large lamps abound. Staff, who are available around the clock, are attentive and exceptionally helpful. Technology is used extensively but unobtrusively in the rooms, the lifts (take a selfie on the in-lift iPad, or choose the music) and in the foyer. Rooms are huge. The smallest is 48sqm, the largest (a family suite sleeping five) 120sqm.
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The Lungarno is the flagship hotel of Florentine fashion heir Leonardo Ferragamo’s Lungarno Collection and the most traditional of the group. It offers an unbeatable location just steps from the Ponte Vecchio, five-star service, magnificent river views from a number of its neat and stylish rooms, and gourmet dining. There is no spa or gym, but an in-room massage and treatment menu will help if you need pampering, and weights and yoga mats can be brought to your room. If you want to peddle your way gently round Florence, city bikes are available to borrow.
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As soon as you walk into the lobby – a Renaissance loggia, decorated with original bas reliefs and stuccoes – you realise that this is no ordinary luxe kip. The hotel spreads out between the main building – 15th-century Palazzo della Gherardesca – and La Villa, a 16th-century former convent on the other side of the 11-acre park, the largest private garden in Florence. Most hotel concierges would be hard pressed to match the top-hatted doorman's local knowledge, while guests have access to the only hotel spa worthy of the name in central Florence.
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St Regis' feel is sheer opulence, and the ambience is enhanced by service which manages to be both discreet and affable. Choose a river view room if you value your Arno panorama: the sweep up-river toward the Ponte Vecchio is superb. For real fashion victims there’s the austere Bottega Veneta suite; other rooms are more Florentine-classic with city-themed murals in some. The hotel’s upscale Winter Garden by Caino restaurant, set in an elegant glassed-in courtyard, is overseen by Valeria Piccini, the larger-than-life chef of highly-rated Tuscan foodie pilgrimage restaurant Da Caino.
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This is one of Florence’s more traditional five-star hotels, replete with opulent interiors, good services and facilities, and a prime position on the north bank of the Arno. It’s definitely worth paying for a bedroom with a river view the panoramic sweep towards the Ponte Vecchio and up to Forte Belvedere is magnificent. A highlight is sixth-floor gourmet restaurant and cocktail bar Sesto on Arno, an enclosed glass box from where the 360-degree views of the city are stupendous, especially at sunset. There’s a decent-sized fitness room and you can use the spa at the St. Regis across the square.
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This is the only one of Florence’s five-star hotels that manages to preserve its grand hotel cachet while seeming fresh, hip and artsy. The design is a sapient mix of contemporary artworks (including several large repeat-pattern ‘fashion’ canvases of shoes or hats) and more classical soft furnishings and antiques. The style might be defined as comfortable contemporary chic. The excellent service is old school – in the good sense – and the hotel has one of the best-equipped hotel gyms in the city – with a view over the Duomo. There’s no spa, but the Brunelleschi and Signoria suites come with their own private steam rooms.
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If you want to enter into the Henry James spirit of a patrician villa surrounded by acres of well-tended formal gardens in the hills above the city – whose Duomo is perfectly framed in the view from the front terrace – then Il Salviatino will deliver. The sumptuous, museum-like interior boasts original frescoes and marble fireplaces, and a Venetian marble sarcophagus discovered during restoration now makes for an unusual bathtub in one of the high-end suites. The concierge service is particularly good, and each guest is assigned a personal service ‘ambassador’.
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The main villa at the centre of the estate is an astonishing sight, an opulent riot of trompe l’oeil frescoes, stucco-work, huge mirrors, polished parquet floors and chandeliers, in a series of reception rooms that mix styles from Art Nouveau to neo-Moorish. Attention to guests here could hardly be bettered, both on the level of concierge tips and advice, and in terms of activities offered, which include Vespa tours and free bike hire. The in-house spa takes its place comfortably among the city’s top five, while the outside pool is heated, and open all year.
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At times it feels like you’re staying in a museum, so magnificent is the period décor in this former nobleman’s townhouse. Appreciating these venerable historic surroundings is the key to the experience: communal rooms, like the music room with its delicate stucco-work and antique furnishings, demand a certain dressy elegance and willingness to play at lords and ladies. Furthermore, it's in a real Florentine neighbourhood here – full of quirky cafés and wine bars, craft shops and antique dealers.
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The hotel offers restrained good taste rather than flashy luxury. It occupies a former Franciscan monastery dating from the 15th century (the weathered, porticoed fa?ade is said to be by Michelangelo). The main building is full of original features: cloisters (now covered), wide arches and vaulted ceilings, a long loggia (now the main restaurant), and worn terracotta floors. Services and facilities are superb and include a well-established cooking school. The immaculate, terraced gardens are a delight and the panoramic pool — set in a green lawn at the top of the property — is a real boon in hot weather and almost makes up for the lack of spa.
