Landscapes of Hospitality | Italy’s Open Stays

Landscapes of Hospitality | Italy’s Open Stays explores how Italian hotels dissolve the boundary between architecture and landscape. Across the country, several properties have turned the relationship between built form and nature into an art form. Terraces frame the landscape, and gardens feel almost cinematic, and pools dissolve into horizon lines. In these places, outdoor spaces are not secondary elements but essential to how hospitality is perceived and lived, shaped as much by light and horizon as by design. Landscapes of Hospitality | Italy’s Open Stays reflects on these environments, where architecture opens up to its surroundings and the act of staying becomes inseparable from the landscape itself.

Villa Cora | Florence

Set just outside Florence’s historic center, Villa Cora is a 19th-century residence surrounded by a private park that feels more like a hidden estate than a city hotel. Its outdoor pool sits within manicured gardens, creating a quiet contrast to the density of the city below. The experience is less about spectacle and more about stillness, lounging under parasols, framed by centuries-old greenery.

Here, the outdoor space is a continuation of the villa’s architecture, extending its rhythm into the landscape.

Passalacqua | Lake Como

On the shores of Lake Como, Passalacqua redefines what outdoor living in a hotel can feel like. Its gardens cascade down toward the lake, designed as a sequence of intimate spaces rather than a single grand view. Marble-lined pools, shaded walkways, and hidden terraces create a sense of discovery at every level.

Guests of the teen describe the grounds as one of the most distinctive elements of the property, with paths that lead through historic landscaping to a private lakeside pier.

Villa Treville | Positano

Carved into the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast, Villa Treville feels like a sequence of suspended terraces overlooking the sea. Once the private residence of Franco Zeffirelli, the property is defined by layered gardens, panoramic viewpoints, and discreet pathways that connect villas to the coastline.

Outdoor living here is theatrical in the best sense: terraces open onto the Tyrrhenian Sea, while gardens soften the transition between architecture and cliffside landscape.

Aleph Rome Hotel | Rome

In Rome, Aleph Rome Hotel offers a different interpretation of outdoor space, more urban, but still immersive. The hotel includes a rooftop terrace and outdoor pool area that feels like a suspended pause above the city.

Rather than nature, the surrounding context becomes the view: rooftop, domes, and the layered texture of Rome itself.

Hotel Villa Franca | Positano

High above Positano, Hotel Villa Franca offers one of the most striking rooftop pool settings in the country. The outdoor terrace frames the coastline in a panoramic sweep, with the pool positioned almost at the edge of the sky.

It is a space designed for viewing as much as inhabiting, where the horizon becomes part of the architecture.

From the lakes of Como to the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast and the quiet landscapes of Puglia, Italy’s most remarkable hotels reveal a consistent philosophy: space is never static, and the experience of hospitality extends far beyond the interior. Outdoors, architecture loosens its boundaries and becomes part of something larger.

Read more about hospitality projects here.