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Design is the Point

April 23, 2026

Design is the Point

Why design at Pellicano Hotels goes far deeper than what you can see

There are hotels that have good design. And then there are hotels where design is the reason for the entire enterprise. Pellicano Hotels – our very own Hotel Il Pellicano, La Posta Vecchia and Mezzatorre Hotel & Thermal Spa – fall squarely into the second category. Here, every object, every surface, every scent is a deliberate choice. Nothing is an afterthought. And once you've stayed (and likely returned time and again), you start to understand why that matters so much.

It begins, as most good Italian stories do, with a love affair. When English aviator Michael Graam and American socialite Patsy opened Il Pellicano on the cliffs of Monte Argentario in 1965, they weren't building a hotel so much as a home: a place where their world, and their aesthetic, could be shared with others. That founding instinct – warmth over grandeur, personality over convention – is still the design brief today, across all three properties (and our soon-to-open La Badia and La Suvera, too). 

Design Through and Through

Walk into any of the three hotels and you feel it immediately. The reception at Hotel Il Pellicano has the easy confidence of a well-furnished living room: just good art, natural light, and the quiet sense that someone who cared deeply about these things put them here. The cocktail bar, tobacco-brown, nods to the atmosphere of a private members' club. The walls carry photographs by Slim Aarons and Juergen Teller. That’s not decorative filler, but images that tell the story of the hotel's own glamorous past

At La Posta Vecchia, the story is different: a 17th-century villa that once belonged to J. Paul Getty, it contains a private museum in the cellar where ancient Roman ruins were discovered during his 1960s restoration. The rooms – no two alike – balance Renaissance opulence with the kind of wry, knowing energy that Marie-Louise Sciò, the group's Creative Director and CEO, brings to everything she touches

At Mezzatorre on Ischia, the former watchtower sits above the Gulf of Naples in seven hectares of Mediterranean maquis, and the design takes its cues from the landscape: restrained, sun-bleached, spectacular.

Across all three, the approach to materials is serious. Textiles are lush and layered, outdoor furniture designed with the Mediterranean in mind. Bathroom marble is statuary, dramatically veined, offset by woven straw and warm wood, while lighting fixtures are curated, intentional, beautiful. These aren't the kinds of decisions made by a procurement team working to a spec sheet. They're the decisions of someone who genuinely cannot abide a bad object.

Beyond Objects 

Design here, though, extends well beyond what you can see. Sound is curated by Marie-Louise Sciò herself, with different tracks for different spaces, adjusted through the day. At Hotel Il Pellicano, the scent of rosemary, native to the surrounding hillsides, permeates every outdoor space and has been extended into a full line of soaps and creams. At La Posta Vecchia, the new pool dialogues with the glistening sea out front, creating an almost otherworldly sense of being suspended between water and sky. At Mezzatorre, thermal water drawn from the hotel's own private spring flows directly into the spa pools, Ischia's volcanic geology, quite literally, becoming part of the guest experience.

This is what separates Pellicano Hotels from properties that simply spend a lot of money on interiors. The design is the experience, woven through every sensory layer. You taste it, smell it, hear it. The whole thing is orchestrated to feel like something you can't quite put into words, but recognise immediately: a home, not a hotel

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