Splendido looks down on Portofino from the wooded hill above the harbour, a pale, shuttered villa with terraces stepping down through its garden. The building was first home to Benedictine monks, became the summer house of the Baratta family in the nineteenth century, and from the 1950s it was where actors stayed when they came to the Riviera; Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton returned again and again.
A three-year restoration by the designer Martin Brudnizki has kept that mood: painted ceilings, soft pinks and blues, antique furniture and tall French windows. Many of the rooms open onto a terrace or a balcony, with the bay, the boats and the green headland in front of you.
Days here are slow. The pool lies on a terrace cut into the hillside, a tennis court sits above the sea, and the Dior Spa has its treatment rooms and a garden of its own. Lunch and dinner are served on La Terrazza, with Ligurian cooking and the harbour far below, and the Baratta Sedici bar takes over later in the evening. When you want the village, a shuttle runs down to the Piazzetta, where Splendido Mare, the hotel's small sister, sits on the waterfront.
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Italian Riviera, Italy.
Portofino is a fishing village of tall painted houses around a small, deep harbour on the Ligurian coast, south-east of Genoa. The whole promontory is a nature park crossed by footpaths through pine and holm oak: one leads out to the lighthouse at Punta del Capo, another climbs over the hill to the abbey of San Fruttuoso, which you can also reach by boat. Above the harbour, Castello Brown and the church of San Giorgio give the best views back over the village.
Santa Margherita Ligure, a larger resort town with a railway station, is a few kilometres along the coast road. In summer, boats run from there and from Portofino to Camogli and the Cinque Terre. Genoa Airport is about an hour away by car, depending on traffic on the coast.
What guests say.
From guest reviews, checked October 2026.4.7/5
4.6/5
Guests write first about the view: the terrace and the pool look down over the harbour of Portofino and the bay, and rooms with balconies catch the sunrise and the sunset. Breakfast, the restaurants with their local cooking and live music in the evening come up often, along with the gardens, the tennis court and a footpath or shuttle down to the village. Many describe staff who make guests feel like family. The honest drawback is price: several reviewers call the hotel expensive or the food a little overpriced, even when they found it worth it.
Read on Google“The very first thing that comes into the mind is the fascinating view and the nice atmosphere of the terrace over the Port.”
Read on Google“The pool was such a beautiful place to relax, swim and gaze into the horizon.”
Read on Google“The various restaurants specialize in local fare complemented by home grown produce.”
Through other eyes.
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