Sir Rocco Forte was the mastermind behind a £25 million renovation of the hotel, employing Paolo Moschino to ensure Villa Igiea’s Belle Époque past was brought into the modern day. For this is a hotel with a storied history. In 1899, the influential Florio family purchased the property from the English admiral, Sir William Domville. The Florios intended for the palazzo – located in the Acquasanta (or ‘Saint Water’) neighbourhood, famed for its restorative properties – to be a sanitarium for their daughter, who was suffering from Tuberculosis.
They changed their mind, however, instead turning the property into a luxury hotel with the help of the Palermitan architect, Ernesto Basile, the figurehead of Italian Art Nouveau, Ettore de Maria Bergler, and the designer Vittorio Ducrot.
The pool at Villa Igiea offers views out onto the Gulf of Palermo, with everyone from kings and tsarinas to Hollywood royalty having checked in to the Belle Époque hotel
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Villa Igiea – named in homage to Hygeia, the Greek nymph of health and hygiene – opened its doors at the end of the Belle Époque. In 1907, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra visited for lunch, alongside Princess Victoria and Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, docking on the Victoria & Albert yacht. With war on the horizon, the hotel played host to the King of Siam, with great crowds of people gathering at the gates to wave at the royal.
During the War, the hotel was used as a hospital, before it was acquired by the Banco di Sicilia and transformed once more into a glamorous retreat for the glitterati. Throughout the 1950s, Hollywood discovered Palermo thanks to Errol Flynn’s film Against All Flags, which was shot in the marina beneath Villa Igiea. Soon, filmmakers from Roberto Rossellini to Martin Scorsese fell in love with the city: while filming The Leopard, Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon stayed at the hotel, and Sophia Loren was among the guests who gathered for gala nights in the palazzo, dressed in Pucci and Dior.
Before long, royalty returned to Villa Igiea. King Carl VI Gustaf of Sweden, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain have all checked in – as has the granddaughter of the King of Siam, whose visit decades earlier had caused such breathless excitement.