How Marie-Louise Scio Turned The Iconic Italian Pellicano Hotels Into A Global Lifestyle Brand

It was late afternoon in Rome firstly of an extended, scorching summer time within the Everlasting Metropolis, and the very modern Marie-Louise Sciò was barely breaking a sweat from her Fifteenth-century condo close to the Castel Sant’Angelo, near the Tiber River. One of the trendy and fabulous hoteliers I’ve ever met, this single mother runs an empire overseeing the Pellicano Group of inns, which embrace the long-lasting Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, La Posta Vecchia in Ladispoli, and The Mezzatorre in Ischia. All boutique inns with a rabid following of followers desperate to expertise the luxurious but easy particulars of her gorgeous properties.

Marie-Louise is greater than the Inventive Director and CEO of Pellicano Accommodations; she is a real tastemaker and has been instrumental in evolving the resort group into a life-style model with ISSIMO, the digital extension of the inns. Her trendsetting, decadent tackle life was impressed by the pandemic lockdown that had us all dreaming of the nice escape. “It is actually about discovering Italy, the non-obvious Italy,” she says of her on-line store, which affords one of the best Made in Italy gadgets. “What makes it so distinctive? It is a nation with a lot excellence and so many alternative fields. Architectural design, style, meals. It is a container for all of that.”

Marie-Louise was impressed to curate a dialog about one of the best issues in life, from equipment together with her famed striped Pellicano towels to different high-quality Italian-made merchandise that followers of Italy (and her inns) would want. It’s, as they name it, “A love affair with Italian magnificence.” What I like about ISSIMO is that it additionally affords up Marie- Louise’s journey ideas with decadent locations in addition to style, decor, and recommendation on find out how to stay the last word Italian life-style, bringing me ever so near the nation I like so dearly.

I first heard of Pellicano Accommodations by way of a detailed buddy and determined I wanted to discover them for myself. By way of my magical summer time sojourn to the island of Ischia, I actually found why the Pellicano model was so particular and why Journey & Leisure lately awarded the vacation spot because the Greatest Island within the World.

After a straightforward one-hour ferry journey from Naples, I arrived at this gorgeous property on the island of Ischia, surrounded by the nice and cozy Tyrrhenian Sea. The seashores are widespread with Italian and worldwide vacationers, as People normally enterprise to the glitzy neighboring island of Capri.

Ischia is an genuine Italian paradise full of luxurious thermal scorching springs and winding cobblestone streets brightened by bougainvillea, all attracting a rising variety of the jet set arriving by personal yacht. I first seen the island as the placement for one in all my favourite motion pictures, “The Proficient Mr. Ripley,” filmed on the foremost port, Ischia Porto, with its bustling sq. towered over by the twelfth century Aragonese Citadel and alongside the sandy Bagno Antonio.

With the arrival of the 5-star Mezzatorre Resort & Thermal Spa, the island has grow to be much more widespread, with the jet set having fun with the seclusion of a resort providing its personal bay and seashore. The 57-room resort is drenched in old-school magnificence with its retro peach umbrellas, surrounded by 17 acres of pine forests and underneath a Sixteenth-century watchtower. You’ll virtually anticipate to see Truman Capote reclining on the cliff-hanging salt-water swimming pool as Elizabeth Taylor regaled him with scandalous tales of her filming “Cleopatra” on the island.

The resort affords suites within the watchtower and low-rise privately positioned bungalows, starting from massive two-bedroom cottages and double bedrooms with views throughout the ocean. Pierre Frey materials fill the open, and breezy rooms and terraces are plentiful. “My favourite room is within the tower, room 124, with views of a distant Mount Vesuvius, the ocean, and the whole resort,” says Marie-Louise.

There are two eating places on the resort, the poolside La Baia, the place I loved a number of the finest pasta I’ve ever had, and La Torre on a terrace overlooking the ocean, for breakfast and a high quality eating dinner expertise. There’s additionally probably the most fabulous out of doors Torre bar with stay piano leisure whilst you sip your martinis. Visitors can simply enterprise out for a lot of eating choices, together with a go to to the charming, picturesque fishing village of Sant’ Angelo and the beautiful Ristorante Casa Celestino close to the marina and instantly on the water.

I spent hours having fun with the magnificent thermal spa and dust remedies the place you may check out mineral-rich water and seawater, very popular Kneipp swimming pools, and a steam room for a correct well-being expertise.

Resort Il Pellicano is on a cliff above the Tuscan shoreline of Monte Argentario, close to the city of Porto Ercole, Italy, solely 90 minutes from Rome airport. The Sciò household has owned and operated the property since 1979, the place celebrities and fashionistas have been flocking for years, and now Roberto Sciò has handed the baton to Marie-Louise.

The property has lengthy attracted the jet set from celebrities to royalty. Lots of the massive rooms have terraces with sea views, 50 rooms in the primary constructing, and 27 extra scattered by way of six cottages. The 2-bedroom Argentario Suite with a personal pool can also be my favourite.

“I put my fingers on each single bed room since I began,” says Marie-Louise. “I might say the 2 new monumental grasp suites are my favourite. However I even have a mushy spot for room 14. I like the placement in the primary constructing, and the view is extraordinary. You are larger up, and you’ll see if there are individuals on the bar, and you’ve got the view of the ocean and the pool.”

There are two eating places, together with Peligrill, for informal eating and Il Pellicano, a Michelin-starred possibility headed by Chef Michelino Gioia. Because the resort effortlessly states, “Piano music drifts by way of the evening air brushing elegant shoulders in night gown, the moon rises into an impossibly massive orange orb, fishermen’s lights flicker on the inky bay beneath looking for out one thing recent for the morrow.” The Il Pellicano expertise is totally elegant.

La Posta Vecchi was inbuilt 1640 above an imperial Roman villa and, for hundreds of years, was utilized by aristocratic households and their esteemed friends en path to Rome. The previous dwelling of Jean Paul Getty is simply 20 minutes from Rome airport.

The previous Renaissance palazzo is full of Italian artwork treasures and gorgeous Seventeenth Century tapestries. With solely 19 suites, it’s as intimate and stylish as attainable. There are eight suites, together with the Getty Grasp Suite overlooking the ocean furnished with a Sixteenth-century Venetian chest, a Seventeenth-century armchair from Northern Italy, Meissen porcelain on the partitions, and wealthy woven carpets on the flooring; the Medici Grasp Suite, whereas three extravagant suites overlooking the ocean or gardens.

“We’ve got a number of events right here, which is all the time actually enjoyable,” says Marie-Louise. “There is a Roman Emperors villa within the basement with unimaginable mosaics on the ground. So the property has this robust masculine vitality.”

Beneath the terrace, the ocean laps the palazzo partitions, and the Cesar Restaurant, headed by Chef Antonio Magliulo, affords the freshest of native substances from the resort’s gardens. There’s a spa, seashore membership, and a surprising indoor stone pool.

“We’ve got one of many largest personal collections of Renaissance furnishings,” says Marie-Louise. “My father purchased it from Getty and acquired the home precisely as it’s immediately. So, all the furnishings, tapestries, and materials are from that interval when Getty had it furnished from Connecticut.”

And the alternatives of rooms are equally as various and historic. “My favourite room right here can be the purple room,” she provides. “It is obtained this unbelievable toilet, which is marble and mirror. I like the Park Room, which is a small room, nevertheless it’s obtained this duplicate of the Madonna and little one of Raphael, which is simply unbelievable. After which we have now the large Medici suite overlooking the ocean with this unbelievable marble bathtub.”