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Ancora Cortina
Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy · Independent · Accessible Luxury
Cortina's oldest hotel opened on the Corso Italia in 1826 and then sat shuttered from 2003, four generations of one family behind it, until Renzo Rosso of Diesel bought it instead of the chalet he had gone looking for. It reopened in June 2025, restored by Vicky Charles in her first project after leaving Soho House: carved timber, hand-painted ceilings, cool marble, and a top-floor suite with a terrace wrapped around the roofline. Aldo Melpignano of Borgo Egnazia runs it, in the town hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics.
- 35 rooms
- Opened 1826
- Interiors: Vicky Charles (Studio Charles & Co)
About Ancora Cortina
- Flavia Cusinato, who ran the Ancora for decades, says she once turned down 21 million euros from Gulf buyers because she did not want to sell Cortina short.
- Rosso's first hotel was not this one: he bought the art deco Pelican on Miami Beach in 1990 and repainted it in clashing colours.
- Thirty-five rooms, furniture made to order by Molteni&C, and a place in Rosso's Querido Collection alongside Forestis above Brixen and Castel Badia near Brunico.
History
The Ancora has been part of Cortina d'Ampezzo since 1826, which makes it the oldest hotel in the town they call the Queen of the Dolomites, standing on the pedestrian Corso Italia. For most of two centuries it was a social anchor for mountaineers, artists and international society, held by four generations of the same family and latterly by Flavia Cusinato, who had come to Cortina at twenty to teach school and married the owner Sergio Bertozzi. The hotel closed in 2003. Cusinato, who says she once refused 21 million euros from Gulf buyers out of respect for the town, finally sold in 2020, at seventy-eight.
The buyer was Red Circle, the property company of Renzo Rosso, founder of Diesel and chairman of OTB Group, which owns Maison Margiela, Marni and Jil Sander. Rosso had gone to Cortina looking for a chalet and bought a hotel instead; it was not his first, since he had taken on the art deco Pelican in Miami Beach in 1990. The restoration ran for years under Vicky Charles of Studio Charles & Co, the longtime Soho House design director, in her first hotel project after going independent, with custom furnishings by Molteni&C. Ancora reopened in June 2025 with thirty-five rooms, carved timber, hand-painted ceilings, marble, a club, a restaurant, a bar, a terrace over the centre of town, and a top-floor Ancora Suite with a wraparound terrace. Operations were handed to Egnazia Ospitalita Italiana, the management company of Aldo Melpignano of Borgo Egnazia, and the hotel trades as part of Rosso's Querido Collection, timed for Cortina's role in the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The setting
Corso Italia is Cortina's pedestrian spine, lined with designer boutiques and busy cafes, and the hotel sits on it at number 62, about six minutes' walk from a cable car station. The valley around it works as hard in summer as in winter, with walking and biking trails, vie ferrate for climbers and cable cars for everyone else, and glacial lakes cold enough to make open-water swimming an event. Cortina hosts events for the 2026 Winter Olympics, staged between here and Milan, seventy years after the 1956 Games.
Awards
- MICHELIN One Key (2026)
Open Ancora Cortina in the atlas for live weekend rates, photos, and the full folio.
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