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Royal Hotel Sanremo
Sanremo, Italy · Independent · Core Luxury
I hate rectangular swimming pools, Gio Ponti said. Are lakes or rivers rectangular? What he built here in 1948, inside the Royal's sixteen thousand square metres of subtropical park, is a mosaic-lined lagoon filled with sea water pumped in from the gulf, filtered and heated, with old nautical ropes for handholds instead of ladders. The Bertolini family opened the hotel in 1872 among the olive groves above a brand-new seafront and still owns it. Sissi stayed, so did King Farouk, Grace Kelly and Rainier, and Gustav V of Sweden; Sanremo's song festival has lodged its performers here for decades.
- 126 rooms
- Opened 1872
- Architect: Alessandro Cantu; enlarged by Pio Soli
About Royal Hotel Sanremo
- Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna wintered in Sanremo from 1874 into 1875 and, before leaving, gave the town the palms planted along the shore for her visit. The promenade below the Royal has carried her title, Corso Imperatrice, ever since.
- Allied bombing wrecked the hotel in the Second World War. Lorenzo Bertolini's grandchildren rebuilt it and reopened on Christmas Day 1946, then added the Ponti pool and the Fiori di Murano restaurant.
- The family's first Royal was an inn in Courmayeur that Queen Margherita used in summer. They built in Sanremo so the same guests had somewhere to spend the winter.
- The guest book runs from Lloyd George and Raymond Poincare to Maria Callas, Pavarotti and Clark Gable, along with a long line of Nobel laureates including Eugenio Montale and Rita Levi-Montalcini.
History
The Royal is the most famous of Sanremo's grand hotels. The Bertolini family, hoteliers of long standing, already ran a Royal in Courmayeur that Queen Margherita used for her summers, and the name drew an aristocratic clientele that moved between Alpine summers and Riviera winters. When the railway reached the coast and northern Europeans began coming south for the mild weather, Lorenzo Bertolini bought a piece of olive-planted land above the new seafront promenade and built. The hotel opened in 1872, to designs by the architect Alessandro Cantu, in the international grand-hotel manner of the Belle Epoque, and was later enlarged by Pio Soli around 1880. The family owns it still.
For half a century it was the address on this stretch of coast. Gustav V and later Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden, the kings of Siam and Nepal, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, members of the House of Savoy, King Farouk of Egypt, Grace Kelly and Rainier of Monaco all stayed, alongside statesmen including Lloyd George and Raymond Poincare and a long procession of singers, actors and Nobel laureates. Artworks accumulated: a fresco by Martin Fernstern from 1884, sculpture by Daniel Depuis and Mathieu Moreau, and statues of Diana and Apollo in the park that came from the garden of the Villa Nobel. Carlo Gastaldi carried out a renovation at the start of the twentieth century, and a dozen car boxes with chauffeurs' rooms above them went up in the square behind, some of which survive.
Wartime bombing damaged the building badly, and Lorenzo Bertolini's grandchildren rebuilt it, reopening on 25 December 1946. In the expansion that followed came the Fiori di Murano restaurant and, in June 1948, the sea-water swimming pool designed by Gio Ponti: reinforced concrete faced in small ceramic mosaic with local stone set into it, built by a firm that specialised in dams, fed with sea water pumped from offshore and then filtered, sterilised and heated. Ponti wanted nothing rectangular. It is one of the earliest hotel pools in Europe to use sea water and remains the most photographed thing on the property. The hotel today holds roughly 126 rooms and suites above the Corso Imperatrice and is a member of Leading Hotels of the World.
The setting
The Royal looks down on the Corso Imperatrice, the palm-lined promenade that is Sanremo's signature. The palms are there because of the Tsarina: Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Alexander II, spent the winter of 1874 and the spring of 1875 in Sanremo, and on leaving she gave the town the palms that had been planted along the shore for her stay. The council named the promenade after her. The Russian presence left more than trees; the onion domes of the Russian Orthodox church stand about four minutes' walk from the hotel. The Casino, opened in the belle-epoque boom that the Royal helped start, is seven minutes on foot, and the Teatro Ariston, home of the Italian Song Festival every February, is about a kilometre away. Behind and above is the Pigna, the medieval old town, and the hotel's own subtropical park of sixteen thousand square metres separates all of it from the sea.
Restaurants and bars
- Lawrence Lounge — Bar
- Corallina Pool Bar & Restaurant — Poolside
Experiences
- Royal Wellness spa — Award-winning spa where guests can relax, be pampered and regenerate skin and energy.
- Restaurant dining — Dishes built on true flavours of land and sea, typical Ligurian and Mediterranean cuisine.
- Heated seawater pool day — Day access to the exclusive heated seawater pool and the Corallina Pool Bar & Restaurant, from April to end of October.
Amenities
- Park
- Reservation Department
- Concierge (restaurant reservations, experiences and transportation suggestions)
- Events Department (private events and incentives)
- Front Desk
- Reception available 24/7 by phone
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