San Domenico Palace – Taormina's convent now rated Three Keys

High on a promontory above the Ionian Sea in Taormina, San Domenico Palace occupies the halls of a Dominican monastery whose community dates to 1374, when the convent of San Domenico was first built as little more than a chapel. The friars' cells and two cloisters survived five centuries of prayer before the Rosso family's heirs converted the convent into a hotel in 1896, adding a wing in the then-fashionable Liberty style and creating one of Europe's first grand hotels. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring made the building his wartime headquarters, and the convent's own church was destroyed in the Allied bombing of July 1943. Reopened on 1 July 2021 under Four Seasons management after an extensive renovation by owners Gruppo Statuto, the hotel found new fame as the Sicilian set of the second season of The White Lotus. The MICHELIN Guide now awards the house Three Keys, its highest distinction, while the in-house restaurant, Principe Cerami, holds a MICHELIN star of its own.

01The house

Two cloisters still stand from the original monastery, reached through a seventeenth-century portal that carries the carved emblem of the Dominican order. The guest list over a century and a quarter reads like a history of European taste: Oscar Wilde and Audrey Hepburn both stayed within these walls, as did Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren, while Richard Wagner and Guy de Maupassant found inspiration in the gardens generations earlier.

Four Seasons took over management in 2021, on the occasion of the hotel's 125th anniversary, under general manager Lorenzo Maraviglia, who returned to his native Italy after a career that had taken him as far as Dubai. The house today holds more than 1,700 square metres of indoor and outdoor event space, enough for a wedding beneath the palms or a corporate retreat in the former cloisters.

02Rooms and suites

The 111 accommodations split into 68 guest rooms and 43 suites, spread across the fourteenth-century Ancient Convent Wing and the 1896 Grand Hotel Wing, with restored frescoes surviving alongside contemporary décor in both. Some of the quietest rooms, in the former monastery wing, still occupy what were once monks' cells, their thick stone walls keeping the Sicilian summer at bay.

Insider tip

Walkable to Taormina's centre and the Ancient Theatre; the hotel also arranges Etna and coastal excursions.

Among the suites, the Etna Suite looks towards the volcano and the bay, several Sea-View Studio Suites come with a private plunge pool on the terrace, and the Teatro Suite frames one of the town's best-known views, over the Ancient Theatre and the sea beyond. Every bathroom is finished in marble, a detail that runs through the hotel's newer wings as consistently as the antique furniture does through the old.

03Where to eat

Principe Cerami, the hotel's signature restaurant, holds a MICHELIN star and looks out over the bay from the old convent; its kitchen is led by executive chef Massimo Mantarro, who reinterprets Sicilian cooking with local, seasonal ingredients. Anciovi, set by the pool, turns to the Ionian Sea itself for its seafood and Sicilian specialities, pairing them with cocktails through the afternoon into the evening.

Rosso, the more traditional of the restaurants, takes its name from Baron Damiano Rosso d'Altavilla, the nobleman who gave his residence to the Dominicans in the fourteenth century, and serves Italian cooking that ranges from the north of the country to the south on a terrace facing Mount Etna. Breakfast is taken in a light-filled room or on a terrace with a 360-degree view that takes in the volcano, the bay and the Ancient Theatre at once.

04The bar

Bar & Chiostro occupies the hotel's open-air cloister, pouring Sicilian wines and cocktails alongside small plates built around local ingredients, in the kind of relaxed, unhurried setting that suits an aperitivo before dinner at Principe Cerami. Every afternoon between four and five o'clock, the same spirit carries over into a Sicilian-accented afternoon tea, served in the Sala della Grande Madia or the Sala Ionio, where the view takes in both the Ancient Theatre and the Ionian Sea, finished with a glass of Sicilian sparkling wine.

05Spa and wellbeing

Botanica Spa holds five treatment rooms – Zagara, Jasmine, Hibiscus and Jacaranda, plus the couples' room Kenzia – alongside separate saunas and steam baths for men and women and a heated indoor pool with a hot tub, open every day from ten in the morning until eight at night. Treatments draw on the plants and flowers of the hotel's own gardens as much as on international names such as Valmont and Barbara Sturm for facials.

Outdoors, the hotel's showpiece is its cliffside infinity pool, cut into the rock with Mount Etna on one side and the open sea on the other.

06The neighbourhood

The hotel stands only a kilometre and a half from the centre of Taormina, close enough to walk to the shops and trattorias of the old town, and the Ancient Greek theatre is a few steps from the gate. Taormina's early-summer calendar of festivals, including its film festival and book festival, draws a crowd to the same streets each June.

Four Seasons also arranges its own excursions from the house: a sail along the coast to Isola Bella and the Grotta Azzurra, or a drive up the slopes of Mount Etna for a vineyard lunch, bringing the wider island within easy reach of an afternoon.

07Making the most of a stay

Four Seasons runs a full calendar of hands-on experiences at San Domenico Palace: masterclasses in pasta, pizza, tiramisù, cannoli and gelato-and-granita-making, held in the hotel's own kitchens, and a private helicopter tour over Taormina that ends with sparkling wine and dinner at a winery on the slopes of Etna. For something slower, a vintage Fiat 500 Spiaggina can be arranged for a drive up to the medieval village of Castelmola, with an aperitivo overlooking the coast at the end of the road.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.