Detailed Review
With 73 very pampering and luxurious rooms, including 13 suites of natural elegance, unpretentious Hotel Lungarno became part of the Small Luxury Hotels of the world in 1998, a network that represents the most characterful and fascinating hotels of the world. The interior design of Hotel Lungarno, inspired by the nuova classicita, is a smart balance of ivory toned fabrics and ocean blue carpets with details that recall the elegance of an aristocratic Italian home. It creates perfect ample space, even for the most well travelled guests in Florence, to relax and feel at home. The antique furnishings, the collection of paintings from mostly 20th-century Italy, among them a Picasso design above the fireplace, displayed in the living room areas and in the hotel rooms, are part of the hotel’s endowed originals and significantly contribute to the continuity between the past and future. The bedrooms, with small significant details, are furnished to give maximum aesthetic as well as functional comfort, with a collection of contemporary paintings, sliver trays with fragrances and typical Italian specialities. Marble and, nickel taps and fittings in the bathrooms are the most distinct signs of the decor in Hotel Lungarno.
Press Quotes
"With a stunning setting right on the south bank of the Arno just a few steps from the Ponte Vecchio..." Conde Nast 08
Independent Reviews
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"A stroll from the Pitti Palace this modish boutique hotel has a haute-design feel and equally glamourous, fashion-forward clientele."
Service has been reported as sloppy, but the hotel is stylish inside, with a number of balconied rooms with great views over the river and Ponte Vecchio. It's also on the more authentically Florentine, less touristy side of the river.
Hotel Lungarno
By Jamie Dunford Wood
In Italian it means on the banks of the Arno, which is exactly where this now very trendy hotel is located, a stone’s throw from the Ponte Vecchio, with the entrance off the wonderful (for antiques shopping) Borgo San Jacopo, and on the best side of the river to avoid the worst excesses of coach tour tourism that Florence can become in the summer. Another Ferragamo outfit (open three years now, although the hotel was well known for many years before), the style is modern British country house/Vogue Interiors, beautifully executed - downstairs, mulberry colour carpeting, cream walls and original Cocteau crayon drawings, with detailing, piping and some furnishings picked out in rich blue; upstairs, thick blue or beige carpets and well chosen antique furnishings (no chain-like standarised repro stuff here), with walls in cream and, in some cases, duck egg blue, and lined with original watercolours and limited edition prints. Half the rooms face the Arno, many with balconies (for example 652-655) with little wicker chairs - ask for them. The suites have deep blue sofas. Most of the 69 rooms have two windows, but certain corner rooms - for example 871 - have three, so are extra bright, and from the higher floors you can see the Pitti Palace and as far as the Piazzale Michealangelo. Bathrooms are ultra modern in pinky/grey travertine marble with thick white towels. Downstairs the bar and breakfast area looks out across the river to the British Consulate, but most delightful is to have breakfast served to you on your balcony while reading EM Forster. Service is Italian, that’s to say variable (the reception staff can be surly when overstretched), prices are high, food is excellent. An extremely elegant hotel, which is so convinced of its own elegance that, in addition to plugging Ferragamo products in the rooms, even sells off its knick knacks in its own interior design store across the road called ’Lungarno Details’ - ’Ingredients of the ambience. Memories of a trip. Fragments of a dream.’ In other words, a bunch of extremely expensive white fluffy towels and various things you won’t have found in your room.
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