Villa San Michele, the Belmond Way of Luxury

No trauma for the regulars of the Villa San Michele. After 18 months of relentless work, the Belmond hotel on the Fiesole hill has reopened completely renovated, improved, refreshed, but without losing its indefinable allure. Indeed, when you arrive, you find the same marvellous avenue that leads you past the Michelangelo Renaissance façade. And when you enter, you recognise the same sophisticated elegance as always.

The virtue of the Lvmh group buying Belmond hotels in 2018 is that it has begun a work of evolving truly iconic structures into models of the highest hospitality conceivable today. And that did not seem possible. Just to take Italian examples, the Cipriani in Venice, the Splendido in Portofino, and Villa San Michele, precisely, were already the ultimate expression of luxury. And yet, without eroding anything of the history and personality of these historic hotels, the roundup of renovations and restyling opens a new chapter in the history of the hotellerie. More exquisitely Italian (playlists included), increasingly artisanal and made-to-measure, capable of discovering new talents and creating an original style.

Apart from the design by Luigi Fragola Architects that has brought colour and lightness to the spaces, as in the dwellings he usually creates, at Villa San Michele there is a new coherence between inside and outside, between the external landscape and the internal landscape that merges into a single image of Florence, the cradle of culture with Brunelleschi's dome rising from above, and its bucolic offshoots, the countryside and the green woods of Monte Ceceri.

From breakfast to the evening, the day and its rhythm are all about beauty and well-being. Certainly at the Spa by Guerlain, the first in Italia at the same time as another in Venice, where you enter through the illusion of a frescoed garden and leave after a couple of hours revitalised and, if you wish, the ladies even made up. But you know that wellness today goes far beyond the confines of a spa, however wonderful. The point is to reconnect with oneself and one's surroundings. with the regenerating experience to the sound of gongs and Tibetan bells in a tiny chapel among the trees designed by JJ Martins in his new holistic course, in front of one of the perfect views of Florence. From there, you can set off on one of the estate's new woodland paths to the swimming pool, where you can return to the glamour, the puzzle games, the four-finger Florentine steak cooked on the grill, and the beautiful gardens that green designer Luca Ghezzi has filled with citrus plants, rosemary hedges and rose pergolas.

In the now enlarged vegetable garden, chef Alessandro Cozzolino goes to harvest the aromas to add flashes of flavour to his dishes, the truly Italian ones at San Michele (don't miss the pasta with mussels, potatoes and smoked provola cheese) and the gourmet ones at Antesi, collected in three very varied menus, including a very tasty vegetarian one (you won't regret a single course).