Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / Italy / Trapani / Palazzo Gatto Art Hotel & SPA, BW Premier Collection
Palazzo Gatto Art Hotel & SPA, BW Premier Collection
Trapani, Italy · BW Premier Collection · Accessible Luxury
An eighteenth-century palazzo in the old centre of Trapani, on the sickle of land the Greeks called Drepanon, handed over to Simone Micheli to fill with light and colour. Nineteen rooms, no two the same, hung with large ceramic works from Santo Stefano di Camastra, the north-coast town that has been making pottery for centuries. Vito Corte took the architecture, Micheli the interiors and the lighting, working with the owner Salvatore Imbordino. There is a spa with a salt room below and a jacuzzi on the roof.
- 19 rooms
- Opened 2022
- Rooms from 215 sq ft (20 m²)
- Architect: Vito Corte
- Interiors: Simone Micheli
About Palazzo Gatto Art Hotel & SPA, BW Premier Collection
- Micheli describes the work as a deliberate dissonance with its surroundings, an abstract reflection on what Sicilian decoration actually means rather than a copy of it.
- Trapani's port, a few minutes from the door, is where the hydrofoils leave for Favignana and the rest of the Egadi Islands, and where the salt from the pans south of town once sailed for northern Europe.
- The house opened in July 2022 and joined Best Western's BW Premier Collection the same month.
- Entry-level rooms start at 215 sq ft (20 m²).
History
Palazzo Gatto is a historic house of the 1700s in the centre of Trapani, on Via della Cuba, recovered and reopened as a hotel in July 2022. The architectural project was by Vito Corte; the interiors and the lighting design were by Simone Micheli, working with the owner Salvatore Imbordino. Micheli's approach was not restoration in the reverent sense. He set out to create what he called a desired dissonance with the context, treating Sicilian decorative tradition as something to abstract and reinterpret rather than reproduce, and the result is nineteen rooms of very different character, dominated by light and space and punctuated by small and large ceramic pieces made at Santo Stefano di Camastra by internationally known artists.
The categories run Superior, Deluxe, Junior Family Suite, Exclusive Suite and Royal Suite, the last with a whirlpool tub or an emotional shower and Turkish bath of its own. Downstairs there is a spa with sauna, Turkish bath, chromotherapy shower, salt room and a pool with whirlpool; upstairs a rooftop terrace and lounge with a panoramic jacuzzi, plus a wine cellar and a restaurant with an outdoor patio. The hotel joined BWH Hotel Group Italia's BW Premier Collection soft brand on opening.
The setting
Trapani occupies a curved spit of land pushing out into the sea towards the Egadi Islands, and the shape is what gave it its name: the Greeks called it Drepanon, the sickle. The hotel sits in the historic centre near the Cuba, within walking distance of the port, where hydrofoils run to Favignana, Levanzo and Marettimo and on to Pantelleria. South of the city the salt pans of Trapani and Paceco begin, worked since at least the Norman period and exported across northern Europe from this harbour. Erice stands on its mountain above the town.
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