Metropole Taormina Maison D'Hotes

When it comes to Sicilian hospitality, glossy high design is hardly the first idiom that comes to mind. As the island’s economy has developed, Sicily’s general atmosphere of rustic earthiness has gone from stigma to selling point. That’s true of Taormina, whose old town center is as pleasantly weathered as any in southern Italy. But once inside the old Metropole Taormina Maison d’Hôtes, behind that 18th-century grand-hotel facade, it’s another story entirely.

This was a bastion of old-world splendor, as Taormina has long been among Sicily’s first tourist stops. It was closed for the better part of forty years, and now that it’s re-opened, its interiors are almost unrecognizable. This is Italian style at its most contemporary — not modern, exactly, as the plentiful marble and well-selected antiques will attest, but the lines are clean, the palette focused, and the furnishings by Poltrona Frau are anything but old-fashioned.

Most of the twenty-three rooms and suites face out to sea, and all have access, naturally, to the spa and to the infinity pool with its seamless view over the Bay of Naxos. It’s all the sophistication you’d expect from contemporary, urban Italy — transplanted to the sublime and decidedly un-metropolitan site of Taormina’s old Metropole.