Five spectacular hotel revamps

Now calling in the Eternal City

Orient Express, one of the most romanticised brands in travel, has taken over Grand Hotel de la Minerve, one of the longest continuously operating hotels in Rome. It’s among several ambitious projects with which the 142-year-old company rang in 2025; besides La Dolce Vita, its brand-new belter of a sleeper train, there are Palazzo Donà Giovannelli in Venice (opening in the autumn), a Mediterranean sailing yacht called Corinthian (due late 2026), and a second pan-European train (2026) well under way, with whispers of several more hotels in the pipeline. 

But for now, it’s all eyes on Orient Express La Minerva, which is impressive enough to have put a few local incumbents on notice. The location – on the Piazza della Minerva, barely 200 metres from the Pantheon (roughly a quarter of the rooms and suites have views of it) – is ideal. Thirty-five-year-old Franco-Mexican artist and architect Hugo Toro has taken care of the design, and his work is polished but adventurous: rough stucco, hammered brass, window frames clad in handpainted tiles, and lots of bevelled high-shine wood – a nod to Orient Express’s roots in railway lore. Architecturally the building is a late 17th-century hodgepodge, with no two spaces exactly alike; Toro mapped out singular decor schemes for all of them, which means you’re guaranteed something unique, whether a scalloped pink-marble column sink or a sprawling terrace almost as large as your suite. The one common element: charming frescoes, spread across wide panelled headboards, that replicate Rome’s diaphanous dawn skies.

The original statue of the goddess Minerva still presides over the grand ground-floor bar-restaurant. But the space has been given a full glow-up by Toro, with banquettes and clutches of potted palms dividing it into more intimate little quadrants under a gleaming conservatory roof. There’s an all-day menu served along with a wine card that pays homage to Italy’s finest (a bijou enoteca with its own street entrance is slated to open in a few months’ time). But the main attraction is the hotel’s second restaurant, Gigi Roma, on the seventh floor. Panoramic hotel rooftops have become a soft arms race here in recent years; this one, with its near-360 degree exposure taking in everything from the dome of St Peter’s to the glorious white confection that is the Vittoriano, looks to be the one to beat.

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Wine country maximalism in South Africa

La Residence made as big a splash in the design world as it did in travel when it opened in Franschhoek in 2008. Capetonian Liz Biden’s hotel in South Africa’s prime wine country marries extravagant French country architecture with Cape Dutch style. The 16 suites that dot its 30 acres are stuffed with African and Indian antiques, tapestries from Europe, and rugs from Iran.

Franschhoek House, the new six-bedroom standalone villa on the property, is a next-level iteration of that trademark look. It has everything for the large-family celebration or blowout group escape: chef’s kitchen (in canary yellow), a billiards table in the great room (with steep pitched ceilings and a jaw-dropping view of the Drakenstein mountains), ensuite bathrooms with standalone tubs, and private patios. The long pool faces the surrounding vineyards, and a 200-year-old oak shades the central courtyard. It’s a wine country pastoral for the avowed maximalist.

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Old is gorgeous again in southern Puglia

Puglia, the stacked heel of Italy’s boot, could be said to be spiritually divided into two places. There are the more central Fasano and Ostuni, where posh villas and anglophone holidaymakers abound; and there’s the deep Salento, below Lecce: traditionally poorer, windier, but with a few lovely towns, easy access to two seas – Adriatic and Ionian – and some of southern Italy’s best beaches.

Palazzo Daniele, in Gagliano del Capo, has been the place to stay here since art consultant Francesco Petrucci first opened his ancestral home to the public in 2019 (the Palazzo is managed by Rome-based GS collection). Petrucci entrusted its renovation to Milanese architects Palomba Serafini Associati, whose intervention added contemporary interest without jettisoning anything – not the faded old tiles, partial frescoes or unstructured gardens.

The team has just reclaimed a second wing of the palazzo, which they discovered included an entire oil mill; four large new suites and a living room have been fashioned from the spaces. A massive millstone, original to the frantoio, sits next to an Osaka sofa by Pierre Paulin; an octagonoal open shower is surrounded by 19th-century mosaic floors. All of it is ready just in time for the inauguration of Palazzo Daniele’s new Social Table, a dinner series programme where guests will meet chefs and each other over multicourse meals showcasing classic Puglian food.

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A New York makeover in Les Batignolles

The New York-based architecture-design practice Roman & Williams, founded in 2002 by Stephen Alesch and Robyn Standefer, espouses an aesthetic that’s a bit Gilded Age and a bit steampunk, capturing the grandeur of eras past and filtering them through a modern urban prism. It has designed everything from film sets to the Tin Building, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s revision of the 4,950sq m Fulton Fish Market in downtown Manhattan as a multi-venue culinary destination.

La Fondation is the practice’s first hotel foray in France – a 10-storey complex in the 17th-arrondissement “village” of Les Batignolles, combining a 58-room hotel, open co-working spaces, a health club (free for hotel guests), and multiple eating and drinking venues, including a rooftop bar.

The building is pure contemporary, steel and glass asserting minimalist spaces with lots of daylight. Into them are layered thick rugs and deep sofas over intricate parquet floors, with walls, doorways and headboards clad in elegant carved wood panelling – a bit vintage, a bit glamour, quintessential Roman & Williams. Original art abounds, though it might struggle to compete with the views from the hotel’s top floors.

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A high-desert haven in California

An hour north-east of Palm Springs, the little community of 29 Palms has lately seen its reputation soar. The 12-room Hotel Wren, a remake of a classic 1940s California motel, opened two months ago here, a few minutes out of town. Its pleasing new face is the work of the LA-based Manola Studio, whose principal Jessica Pell commissioned local carpenters and artists to produce the handpainted tiles lining the bathrooms, the finished-wood kitchenettes in several of the rooms and the handpainted botanical designs that climb the walls in the main lounge.

The community-retreat vibe it cultivates might, for some, give a little too much California cringe. But it will appeal greatly to others: there’s a clutch of pet-friendly rooms, an eco-friendly saltwater pool, an on-site shop called Windsong with fancy-ish provisions, an honesty library – and a strictly over-21 guest policy. Wren House, the two-bed, two-bath bungalow at the property’s edge, has a full chef’s kitchen and its own desert garden.

@mariashollenbarger