The Aficionados – Alchemists of Italy

The Aficionados is a series of directory magazines about the culture of travel with style edits about hotels, private houses and creative lifestyles.

Our travel inspired magazines showcase our encounters with interesting places to stay and incorporate our second love of all things crafted.

Alchemists of Italy

Page-turning hotel interiors, restoration dens, modern mountain residences, new constructions of meticulous provenance and re-loved historical gems dance across the spectrum of hotel owners' autobiographical concepts.

Featuring 21 hand-selected hotels over 148 pages and 189 colour photographs, Alchemists of Italy is the new handbook for those who love to travel in style and reside at hotels that go beyond the cookie-cutter design. The starting block of design in many of the hotels could be found in a Corinthian column, a convent's herbaria decked in cotta tiles, a classic Olivetti typewriter, a carving from Carrara marble, the tales of wealthy merchants or a table light from Atollo by Vico Magistretti.

From a 13th-century Venetian-Byzantine palace, aged monasteries transformed for the hip pilgrims of today, gorgeously chilled re-born hotels that celebrate 'Cinematic Italian' to a once abandoned hilltop Tuscan village, salvaged by a man who fell in love with the views over Val d'Orcia.

For the devotees of authentic originality, we reference the outposts of intricate Italian design, meticulously detailed hotel spaces using the icons of Italy in their unmistakable chemistry, sometimes in the guise of rich Medici reds, a minimalist sanctuary and others that hug a blaze of magical terrazzo.

This is not a travel guide of Italy, yet the story of passionate people who satisfy the heritage of Italy using their own inherited style.