Hip Hotels Italy (Paperback)

~ Herbert Ypma (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Destined to become the bible for traveling fashionistas—or those who just wish they were. -- Entertainment Weekly

His well-edited selection of the best-designed places to stay will have readers scrambling to make travel plans. -- Travel & Leisure

Hotels so stunning, so individual, so undeniably designer destinations in their own right. -- Wallpaper

The book's color photos will get you packing. -- Playboy, August 2002

The color photos are splendid. -- The Bookwatch, July 2002

Ypma's beautiful photographs are accompanied by discussions of each hotel's history and design. -- Condé Nast Traveler

[E]nough to restore even the most jaded traveler's appetite for originality and personality in hotel design. -- Weddingbells, Fall/Winter 2002

Product Description

"You can have the universe, if I can have Italy," said Giuseppe Verdi. This sounds generous, but Verdi knew that Italy is a universe—beautiful, diverse, and filled with the relics of two millennia of civilization. The new volume of Hip Hotels presents amazing places to stay in destinations the length and breadth of its boot-shaped peninsula and islands. Herbert Ypma has ventured far beyond the familiar rolling hills of Tuscany, the postcard-perfect Amalfi Coast, or the Grand Tour destinations of Venice, Florence, and Rome, to introduce real discoveries in underexplored regions such as Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, and Le Marche. You might be inspired to visit the utterly refined Hotel Raya on the Aeolian island of Panarea, from whose all-white terraces you can watch the volcano of Stromboli spurt fiery lava into the night skies. Sicily offers medieval gems like a converted Franciscan monastery in Taormina, and Castello di Falconara, a Norman castle on the beach. At the opposite end of the country, in the ultra-stylish ski town of Cortina d'Ampezzo, is the Hotel de la Poste, run today by the same family as when Hemingway used to drive up from Venice in the early 1930s. If the beach and night life of the Adriatic coast are more your scene, then fashion designer Alberta Ferretti's Carducci 76 makes an appealing base. Or enjoy the peace and splendor of Villa Feltrinelli on the shores of Lake Garda, a stately neogothic property that recently has been revamped and restored by a San Francisco-based design firm. Many hotels are a complete surprise: ancient cave-dwellings in the eroded rocky landscape of Basilicata, or the trulli of Puglia, centuries-old igloo-like constructions with conical slate roofs. And whether cave, abbey, olive mill, fishing hut, or beachside palazzo, every one of these unique hotels is true to its locale in its architecture, design, and gastronomy. 500 photographs, 400 in color.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500283478
• ISBN-13: 978-0500283479
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #234,030 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Blends a travel guide with a design resource, July 8, 2002

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Hip Hotels Italy joins others in the lauded Thames & Hudson "Hip" series that blends a travel guide with a design resource, focusing on the biggest names in architecture and interior design. Notable establishments in Italy which include olive mills, caves, abbeys and even fishing huts show how all types of architecture can be transformed and renovated for tourism. The color photos are splendid.