San Domenico Palace Hotel Taormina

San Domenico Palace Hotel Taormina

You already know this one. San Domenico Palace was the setting for the second season of The White Lotus, which aired in 2022 and sent bookings surging for the hotel, for Taormina, and for Sicily as a whole. That context is worth having because it explains why rates are what they are and why availability requires planning months ahead. It is also worth knowing that the hotel was extraordinary long before HBO discovered it, and will be long after the association fades. The building started as a 14th-century Dominican convent. Oscar Wilde stayed here. So did Audrey Hepburn, and Kaiser Wilhelm II, and most of the grand European travellers who made their way to Sicily in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A second wing, the Grand Hotel Wing, was added in 1896. Four Seasons took over the property in 2021, renovated it substantially, and had the good sense to keep the original artworks and antiques from the convent's collection rather than replacing them with reproductions. The cloister, the chapel, the frescoed ceilings, all of it remains. The hotel sits on a rocky promontory above the Ionian Sea, in the heart of Taormina itself, steps from the Greek Theatre and the main corso. The clifftop infinity pool is the image most people have seen. The views from it, and from most of the rooms, take in both the Ionian Sea below and Mount Etna behind, one of the more improbable combinations of scenery available from a sun lounger anywhere in Europe. Request a room in the Garden Wing, in the former convent, if you want the original architecture and the cloister; the Grand Hotel Wing rooms tend to be larger but less atmospheric. There are three restaurants. Principe Cerami is the fine dining option, with a Michelin star and a menu built around Sicilian produce and technique. The hotel also holds Three Michelin Keys, the guide's highest hospitality rating. The Botanica Spa is substantial and worth building time into your stay for. The concierge team is notably good at organising things that feel genuinely special rather than packaged, the stargazing experience on Etna with a local astrophysicist and a chef is one example. The Godfather tour, visiting filming locations across eastern Sicily, is another. Catania airport is about 50 kilometres away, roughly an hour by car. The short version: One of the great hotels of Sicily in one of the great settings in Europe. The White Lotus association has made it harder to book and more expensive, but neither changes what the place actually is.