La Posta Vecchia Hotel

La Posta Vecchia Hotel

La Posta Vecchia has one of the more layered histories of any hotel in Italy. The site was a seaside retreat for Roman emperors, then a Renaissance palazzo for the noble Orsini family, and most recently the private home of J. Paul Getty, who filled it with Italian art treasures assembled with his art historian Federico Zeri. When the Sciò family bought it in 1980 and converted it into a hotel, they kept everything Getty left behind: the tapestries, the marble busts, the antique maps, the Renaissance furnishings that line every corridor and room. During renovation work they also discovered a 2nd-century BC Roman villa beneath the foundations, complete with mosaics, African and Greek marble, and amphorae. The private museum on the lower ground floor is included in every stay and is worth an hour of anyone's time. There are only 21 rooms and suites, each individually decorated. If there is a suite to book here it is the Medici Suite, which was Getty's own private wing, with original artworks from his collection and a deep pink bathtub framed by two marble staircases that is one of the more memorable bathrooms in any hotel anywhere. The Tower Rooms on the upper floor are reached by stairs only but overlook either the gardens or the Tyrrhenian Sea from dormer windows and have the feel of a place entirely removed from the rest of the world. The hotel is part of the Pellicano Hotels group, which also owns Hotel Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, and the sensibility is consistent: discreet, serious about food, and not interested in scale. The Cesar restaurant sits right on the water, chef Antonio Magliulo works with vegetables from the hotel's own kitchen garden, and the spa uses Santa Maria Novella products alongside ingredients from those same gardens. The hotel opens April to October, and outside season is available for exclusive private rental. Rome is 40 minutes away, Fiumicino airport 30, which makes this a very useful first or last night if you are flying in or out of Rome rather than a detour. The short version: The right choice if you want Italy's history at close range without being in a city. Nineteen rooms, a private Roman museum underneath your feet, and Getty's furniture in every room.