Top 10: the best honeymoon hotels in Florence
An insider's guide to the top honeymoon hotels in Florence, including the best for romantic rooftop terraces, intimate restaurants, spacious suites, gorgeous gardens and Ponte Vecchio views, in central Florence locations.
Continentale
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
8Telegraph expert rating
Perhaps the most playfully chic of the six Florentine properties in Leonardo Ferragamo’s Lungarno group, the Continentale occupies an enviable position overlooking the Ponte Vecchio. You might expect the hotel to play it safe on the design front. Not so the Continentale, which raids late 1950s and early 1960s style books for its inspirations, making for a bright, light and airy space pitched somewhere between Audrey Hepburn and Twiggy. Rooms are equally stylish but take the colour palette back to a soothing combo of white, cream, leather and teak. It’s a stylish address, perfect for a romantic long weekend, with the bonus of a rooftop bar and a small, intimate spa. Read expert review From £132per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Portrait Firenze
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
9Telegraph expert rating
This 14-suite bolthole, a short sashay from the Spanish Steps, is one of the city’s most stylish luxe options, lent panache by Michele Bonan’s tasteful contemporary-retro design scheme. Suave and very private: think of it as a high class residence rather than a hotel. When they say suites, they mean suites: even the entry-level Superiors are spacious. Rich fabrics play off against austere earth tones in walls and carpets; and there are fun little touches like video fireplaces. The discreet service, courtesy of a dedicated ‘lifestyle team’, is unparalleled – as is the cachet of the guests-only rooftop bar, where aperitivos can be enjoyed of an evening, and where you can choose to have breakfast served if you don’t want it in your room. Read expert review From £420per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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The St. Regis Florence
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
9Telegraph expert rating
In pedestrianised river-side piazza Ognissanti, Starwood’s St Regis is in the heart of prime Florentine luxe-boutique territory, and no distance from the major sights. St Regis' feel is sheer opulence, and the ambience is enhanced by service which manages to be both discreet and affable. All the Regis’ 100 bedrooms are as luxurious as you’d expect for this level of hotel. Choose a river view room if you value your Arno panorama: the sweep up-river toward the Ponte Vecchio is superb. All suites get their own butler. In an elegant glassed-in courtyard, the hotel’s upscale Winter Garden by Caino restaurant is overseen by Valeria Piccini, the larger-than-life chef of highly-rated Tuscan foodie pilgrimage restaurant Da Caino. Read expert review From £294per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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J.K. Place Firenze
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
9Telegraph expert rating
One of Italy’s classiest townhouse hotels, J.K. Place Firenze has been much imitated since its launch, but few of the copies match the warm, suave, elegant original. Its classic-contemporary décor is the result of a meeting of minds between Italo-Israeli hotelier Ori Kafri and local interior designer Michele Bonan. It all feels a little like you’ve stepped into the house of a classy collector, a rich Florentine uncle who likes to set classical French and Italian antiques off against Moroccan lamps and Chinese lacquered sideboards. Rooms are impeccably tasteful. General manager Claudio Meli is one of the best in the game, and his insider knowledge of Florence – distilled in a guidebook which is supplied free of charge to all guests – is second to none. Read expert review From £324per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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AdAstra
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
9Telegraph expert rating
AdAstra is set in the largest private garden ‘intra moenia’ (between walls) in Europe. It's a mere stroll away from the buzzing nightlife, great restaurants, bars and hip independent boutiques of the boho-chic Oltrarno neighbourhood, south of the river. Inspired by the concept of a Parisian hotel particulier, this boutique hotel has the feel of an aristocratic private apartment which is not far from the truth – the Marchese Torrigiani lives on the ground floor. The owners have taken the period features (frescoes, vast chandeliers, fine stucco-work and creaky original parquet floors) and added a quirky yet convincing mix of vintage, up-cyled and reclaimed furniture, objéts and knick knacks from the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies. The result is classy, comfortable and highly original. Read expert review From £94per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Villa Cora
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
9Telegraph expert rating
It’s easy to understand why Villa Cora has been such a hit since it opened. Meticulously restored, it centres on an eclectic late-19th century villa that feels like a Tuscan film-set fantasy, yet facilities and service are those of a modern luxury hotel. The main villa at the centre of the estate is an astonishing sight, an opulent riot of trompe l’oeil frescoes, stucco-work, huge mirrors, polished parquet floors and chandeliers, in a series of reception rooms that mix styles from Art Nouveau to neo-Moorish. Of the hotel’s 46 rooms and suites, 30 are in the main villa, each with its own themed décor. The 14 rooms in the Villino Eugenia annexe are equally theatrical. The outside pool is heated, while the spa, with its Sarah Chapman facial care range and Officina Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella body line, takes its place comfortably among the city’s top five. Read expert review From £235per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Belmond Villa San Michele
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
8Telegraph expert rating
Villa San Michele — one of Florence’s most expensive hotels — is housed in an ancient former monastery, and combines Renaissance atmosphere with 21st-century comforts galore. For some, the off-radar location will be a boon while others may feel out of things. The main building, a rabbit warren of rooms, corridors and stairways, is full of original features: cloisters (now covered), wide arches and vaulted ceilings, a long loggia (now the main restaurant), and worn terracotta floors. The 22 rooms in the main building occupy have a suitably ecclesiastical feel although the monks would have surely frowned at the luxuries on offer. The immaculate, terraced gardens are a delight and the panoramic pool is blessing in hot weather. Read expert review From £507per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Four Seasons Hotel Firenze
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
9Telegraph expert rating
As soon as you walk into the lobby – a Renaissance loggia, decorated with original bas reliefs and stuccoes – you realise that this is no ordinary luxe kip. The hotel spreads out between the main building – 15th-century Palazzo della Gherardesca – and La Villa, a 16th-century former convent on the other side of the eleven-acre park, the largest private garden in Florence. With its oil paintings, antiques and slightly Old Parisian feel, the décor is elegantly sumptuous, and in the best possible haute-bourgeois taste. The Four Seasons has the only hotel spa worthy of the name in central Florence and the theatrically opulent main restaurant, Il Palagio, is fully up to the hotel’s exacting standards. Read expert review From £356per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Il Salviatino
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
8Telegraph expert rating
If you want to enter into the Henry James spirit of a patrician villa surrounded by acres of well-tended formal gardens in the hills above the city – whose Duomo is perfectly framed in the view from the front terrace – then Il Salviatino will deliver. The sumptuous, museum-like interior boasts original frescoes and marble fireplaces, and a Venetian marble sarcophagus discovered during restoration now makes for an unusual bathtub in one of the high-end suites. You need to come prepared for the formality of the setting – it’s not the kind of place that goes with Bermuda shorts and bikinis – but if you like the idea of dressing for dinner or sitting in the garden in a linen suit reading Proust, you couldn’t find a better setting. Read expert review From £376per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Palazzo Magnani Feroni
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
8Telegraph expert rating
This grand palazzo owes its current appearance to the wealthy marquis who bought it in 1770, and it still breathes an air of wealthy leisured ease and heraldic pomp – right down to the occasionally dowdy rugs and old-fashioned sofas, a sure sign of aristocratic entitlement. With only twelve suites and a wealth of high-ceilinged, chandelier-laden galleries and lounges to lounge in, there are times when it feels like you have the whole place to yourself. In turning the palazzo into a hotel, it was decided to leave the huge aristocratic rooms intact – as a result, even the entry level Classic Suites cover 80 square metres, the size of an average Italian city-centre apartment. All feature opulent antique décor. Read expert review From £131per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
