Luxury Hotels — House No. 05
Old buildings in improbable places, kept rather than corrected — and the trains and boats that were always part of the story.
An Introduction
It began, improbably, with a hotel in Venice bought to save it, and then with a train bought to run again. Nothing about that is a strategy. What followed was half a century of acquiring buildings that already mattered — a monastery above Portofino, a palazzo on the Amalfi cliffs, a convent garden on the Giudecca — and resisting the urge to make them modern.
The result is a group with an unusual relationship to time. These houses have guest books rather than brand guidelines. They were places to arrive at long before the company existed, and the great achievement is that they still feel like themselves.
The Philosophy
Restoration here is conservative in the best sense. Frescoes are uncovered rather than repainted. Cloisters stay cloisters. Where a room is small because a monk slept in it in 1450, the room remains small, and everyone involved understands that this is the reason to come.
The locations are the other half of the argument. A mile of Anguillan sand, a ledge above Ravello, the hill that looks down on Portofino's harbour — none of these could be bought again today, and the group knows it. The buildings are kept quiet so the geography can speak.
Romance is the word the company would use, and for once it is earned rather than claimed. It comes from continuity: the same terrace, the same crossing by launch, the same hour before dinner, repeated by different people for a hundred years.
Some places are not improved by being brought up to date.
Featured Properties
Monasteries, palazzi and a beach on Anguilla — each one held onto rather than reinvented.
No. 01 — Giudecca, Venice
Three minutes across the water from San Marco and an entirely different city. Gardens, a vineyard, and a pool laid out where a convent orchard once stood — the rare Venetian address with room to walk. Guests arrive by launch, which sets the tone before anyone has said a word.
Read the Guide
No. 02 — Portofino, Italy
A sixteenth-century monastery on the hill above the harbour, turned hotel in 1901 and largely unchanged in intention since. The terrace looks down on the boats; the umbrella pines do most of the shading. Half of twentieth-century Europe has had lunch here and behaved discreetly about it.
No. 03 — Ravello, Amalfi Coast
An eleventh-century palazzo a thousand feet above the sea, with frescoes that were found under plaster during the restoration and left visible. The infinity pool hangs over the coast road; below it the water goes from green to blue somewhere no one can quite point to.
No. 04 — Fiesole, Florence
A fifteenth-century monastery in the hills at Fiesole, its façade attributed to Michelangelo and its cloister still doing quiet duty as a corridor. Florence lies below in the haze, close enough to reach in twenty minutes and far enough to leave behind entirely.
No. 05 — Deià, Mallorca
Two manor houses in the village that drew writers and painters to the Tramuntana long before anyone thought of hotels. Thirty acres of olive terrace, a donkey or two, and a working studio — the artistic life here is practised rather than decorated.
No. 06 — Maundays Bay, Anguilla
White Moorish domes along a mile of pale sand on an island that never took to high-rise anything. The architecture is odd and wonderful, the water is absurdly clear, and the evenings are made of very little — which, on Anguilla, is the entire point.
Where They Are
The collection has always included the getting there — trains and river boats counted among the houses long before it was fashionable.
From the Journal
Travel — July 2026
On wagon-lits, marquetry panelling and the almost forgotten idea that the journey deserves as much attention as the address at the end of it.
Table — June 2026
The lagoon turns pink, the boats go quiet, and the whole city agrees to stop working. A short defence of the aperitivo as an institution.
Slow Travel — May 2026
Ravello to Amalfi on foot, early, before the coast road wakes. Nine hundred steps, three chapels and one very good coffee at the bottom.
Maison Voyage Recommends
Take a room on the garden rather than the lagoon — the view you want is the one you walk into, not the one you look at. Swim before eight, when the pool belongs to nobody. Then take the launch across to San Marco at the hour the light goes and come back late, which is the only way to see Venice empty.
Ben Trousil, Founding Editor
Questions
An Invitation
One letter each month: a place worth the detour, an object worth keeping, a page worth reading slowly. Nothing more.