The Hotel Splendido is a small luxury hotelperfectly located to discover the beauty of the Cinque Terre region of Italy,just a few minutes walk from the bay of Portofino. The views are magnificent across alandscape dotted with cypresses to the colourful harbour where yachts jostlewith fishing boats. It’s an hotel where elegance and refinement, hospitalityand service are second to none. Standing amid verdant woodlands overlooking aravishing seascape, The Hotel Splendido is a unique blend of beauty andcomfort. Originally a monastery, the four-story building was attacked with suchfrequency in the sixteenth century by Saracen pirates that the monks abandonedit to the sheep that roamed the coastal hills. Today the Splendido still has apatrician air. It is not a grand hotel in the conventional sense, it has noneof the sumptuous fantasy of the Ritz and it doesn't pretend to be a setting forelaborate social rituals. Instead it is quietly democratic. Theprincipal reception rooms are furnished with old looking glasses, gilt consoletables and Persian rug, the dining room serves food based on local, evenpeasant, tradition - fresh fish, home made pasta and lots of local aromaticherbs. The gardens run down the slopes beneath the hotel to the sea, bushes oflavender and wild herbs grow thickly under old olive trees and tangles ofbougainvillaea obscure the paths and overhang secluded garden benches.
