A sixteenth-century monastery has watched over Portofino since the 1950s. It has just finished the longest refit of its life, and a private villa now sits below it on the water.
Splendido stands on the terraced hillside above Portofino, where Benedictine monks built a monastery in the sixteenth century. The bay opens below, a small deep harbour packed with masts, the wooded promontory closing the far side. The pool runs along the slope with the water beyond it, orange parasols down its length. The town is a ten-minute walk further down.
The hill
The hotel has been Portofino's grande dame since the 1950s. Actors, artists, film directors and royalty have signed its book across the decades. Martin Brudnizki Design Studio spent several years reworking the property one season at a time, closing over winter and reopening each June with another part finished.
The pool terrace and the Splendido Grill came in 2023, along with the renovated Baronessa Suite. New rooms and a lobby followed in 2024. The main building reopened in June 2025, the largest phase of the work, and the one that changes how the hotel reads from the moment you arrive.
The rooms
The restyled main house holds a new cocktail bar, a coffee bar, a lounge, the breakfast room and a small retail space. A Dior Spa opened here too, the first permanent one in Italy, with four treatment cabins and a relaxation deck on the roof. The rooms carry contemporary Italian art and botanical prints. The corridors are hung with sketches of Portofino and old photographs of the guests who made the name.
Brudnizki drew much of the furniture from local estate sales and auction houses, restored and repainted in the Genoese manner. Chiavari rattan and Albissola ceramics run through the rooms. Outside, the planting leans on native Ligurian herbs and the puddinga stone of the cliffs, the palette pulled from the blues and turquoises of the sea.
The villa
A short walk down the hillside, inside a protected national park, Belmond opened Villa Beatrice in July 2025. It is the first private villa the group has taken on. The house sits on a spit above Punta Caiega, between Paraggi and Portofino, with the Gulf of Tigullio wrapping three sides.
Courtesy of Belmond — Villa Beatrice above the Gulf of Portofino
The building was Villa Odero, raised by the Ligurian industrialist Attilio Odero and designed by the Tuscan architect Gino Coppedè in a mix of Gothic Revival and Art Nouveau. Belmond bought it in 2021 and restored the Coppedè frescoes and painted ceilings, added marble bathrooms and filled the rooms with regional antiques. Marco Bay reworked the gardens.
The villa sleeps ten across five keys, including La Casetta, a one-bedroom cottage set in the citrus grove. There is a plunge pool and a sun deck, a secret sea garden, a summer pavilion for treatments, private sea access and a chef on call. Guests draw on every service at Splendido up the hill.
Portofino has always rewarded the people who climb above it. Splendido has spent four centuries proving the point.
The Splendid EditThe table
Corrado Corti has run the kitchens for more than twenty years. La Terrazza keeps the fine dining, the Splendido Grill the lighter hours by the pool. Both look out over the same bay. The town below fills through the summer, and the hill keeps its quiet.
The work is close to done now. What reopens each June is the hotel it has always been, older and better kept, still watching the harbour from the monastery walls.
The Splendid Edit on Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino, and its new private villa above the Gulf of Tigullio. Details at belmond.com.
Photography courtesy of Belmond — Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino