This Historic A-List Hot Spot in Portofino Has a Stunning New Look—And Is the Place to Be Seen This Summer

Behind the elegant, dark wood-paneled front desk of Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino, there sits a heavy, weather-beaten, leather-bound book. Inside its gently yellowed pages, you’ll find the autographs of many of the historic hotel’s most distinguished guests from decades past: Princess Grace of Monaco, who can be seen, in ravishing black-and-white photos, strolling past the hotel’s laidback La Terrazza restaurant; Ava Gardner, who even has a suite named after her at the property’s sister hotel, Splendido Mare, just a stone’s throw away; and Elizabeth Taylor, who accepted Richard Burton’s proposal, the first time around, on one of its wisteria-covered terraces (her favorite dish, the spaghetti pomodoro with tomatoes in three textures, is still on the menu).

Despite its illustrious pedigree, though, Splendido has never been content to rest on its laurels, as evidenced by the notes left in the book’s final pages, from its most recent visitors: everyone from Dua Lipa to Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly. They’re drawn by the building’s incredible setting and history, of course—hewn onto a verdant cliffside overlooking the glittering Ligurian Sea, it was originally a Benedictine monastery and then the summer home of an Italian baron before being transformed into a glamorous hotel in 1902—but also its unfailingly discreet and relaxed atmosphere, as well as its perpetual eagerness to look to the future and adapt its lavish suites and palatial communal spaces accordingly.

To that end, the hotel is currently in the midst of an epic, multi-year restoration and redesign spearheaded by Martin Brudnizki, the Swedish architect behind the ornate and wonderfully whimsical interiors of Annabel’s, the eye-popping splendor of The Coral Room at The Bloomsbury, and the old-world ostentation of The Beekman in New York, among countless other hotels, bars, restaurants and private members’ clubs. Renowned for his talent for reinvigorating historical buildings by imbuing them with a sense of playful theatricality and humor, he’s the ideal choice for the project, though he hesitates to call it a redesign per se. “We’re just reviving it for a new era,” he asserts, adding that the goal was to make guests feel like they’re bedding down at a friend’s villa, albeit a wildly wealthy one’s. “We wanted it to look like a house that had been in the family for generations and had been lovingly added to over the years.”

To achieve this authentic, informal, lived-in feel, Brudnizki took inspiration from a number of stunning buildings in the region, from La Cervara, a 14th-century abbey with spectacular gardens which now functions as a scenic wedding venue, to two that are visible in the distance from Splendido’s panoramic terraces: San Giorgio, a soaring, lemon-colored church; and Castello Brown, an ancient fort-turned-historic house museum. Homing in on their uniquely Ligurian design details, he sought to combine these in unexpected ways in the spaces he’s renovating, to create something that pays tribute to traditional techniques and local craftsmanship while also feeling resolutely contemporary.