The Ashbee Hotel

The Ashbee Hotel

Villa San Giorgio was designed by the English architect Charles Robert Ashbee in the early 1900s, and since 2011 the same building has operated as a 24-room hotel a few streets back from Corso Umberto in Taormina, close enough to San Pancrazio Church and the Taormina cable car station to reach on foot. Inside, the Arts and Crafts details Ashbee left behind sit alongside Sicilian architecture, spread across just two floors, so the place reads more like a private house that happens to take guests than a hotel with a lobby. The kitchen is the reason regulars keep returning: St. George Restaurant is run by Heinz Beck, and few 24-room hotels anywhere can claim a chef of that standing cooking under their own roof. Days settle around the infinity pool and the Ashbee Bar, with a garden and roof terrace for anyone who wants distance from both. Rooms carry minibars, bathrobes, and slippers, and staff switch comfortably between English, Italian, French, and Spanish. Airport transfers can be arranged for 220 euros return, and an extra bed runs 115 euros a night if you are travelling with a child. None of this suits anyone chasing a resort with kids' clubs and endless facilities, or a traveller who wants anonymity in a big lobby. It suits a couple who booked partly for the restaurant, or anyone who would rather spend an evening on a two-floor property with 24 rooms than a five-hundred-room one. The walk into central Taormina takes minutes, but there is little reason to rush it. A 24-room hotel in a 1900s villa by Charles Robert Ashbee, two floors from Corso Umberto in Taormina, with an infinity pool and St. George Restaurant run by Heinz Beck downstairs. It suits a small, food-focused stay, not a resort with a full activities board.