RESORT SPA ANDREA JEZOVIT » JOURNALIST » SPA BUSINESS
A NEW RENAISSANCE
Te Four Seasons Hotel Florence has built an Italian spa resort inside a perfectly preserved Renaissance palace; and with products from one of the world’s oldest pharmacies, the celebration of Florence’s past doesn’t stop there
T
he Four Seasons Hotel Florence couldn’t be more Florentine. For one thing, it’s located in two Ren- aissance buildings: the 15th century Palazzo della Gherardesca, which
boasts famous past owners including the Medici family; and the 16th century Conventino, a former convent. Both are situated in the 11-acre (4-hectare), 500-year- old Giardino della Gherardesca, Florence’s largest private garden. Ten there’s the 791sq m (8,514sq ſt) spa itself, located in a third
Te us$151m Four Seasons Hotel Florence is located in two Renaissance buildings, situated in the city’s largest private garden
Florence with exactly the type of hotel previously lacking, according to PR coordinator Ginevra Brandolini d’Adda: before, Florence only attracted mass tourists, she says, but now it’s attracting high-level tourists.
TIME MACHINE
building, with big windows overlooking a pool and the garden’s weathered trees. It offers treatments craſted by Tuscan-born spa manager Lucia Papalini and Florence-based Officina Profumo- Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, one of the world’s oldest pharmacies. “Te idea is to have Italian treatments and brands, and guests here are happy because they don’t want shiatsu treatments and things you find in other parts of the world,” Papalini says. Following seven years of planning and construction, the June
2008 launch of this €120m (us$151m, £100m) Four Seasons was an important one for Florence. Aside from preserving an historic city centre property, the project gave the city its first spa resort – previ- ously the centre had only one day spa, SoulSpace. It has also provided
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Step into the lobby of the hotel, once the palace’s court- yard, and original Renaissance details surround you; there are stuccos, frescos created by artist Agostino Ciampelli for the Medicis, and elaborate bas-reliefs – the property’s most valuable artwork. The opulently-designed suites also boast various his- torical features including 19th century paintings, Chinese silk wallpaper and ceramic flooring. Preserving these details and mingling them with the modern to
create a five-star hotel wasn’t easy. Aſter the Fingen Group (an Ital- ian conglomerate) acquired the property in 1999 from the country’s metal manufacturing company Società Metallurgica, and chose Four Seasons as operators, a two-year development process began. While Four Seasons had design standards more applicable to contempo- rary buildings, the restoration of the listed property also needed to be closely supervised by government agencies.
SPA BUSINESS 3 2010 ©Cybertrek 2010
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