March the 7th, 2020: in the general scared and incredulous astonishment the Italian television announced the closure of the borders of the Lombardy region, becoming from that moment on a red zone.
As you stroll through the portico that leads into the Tettuccio, you can’t help but indulge your imagination as it conjures up a postcard image of the Belle Époque, those dreamy years between the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth when thermal tourism was flourishing in Europe, reaching a level of popularity never seen before or since.
“A place is never only ‘that place’. We are a little bit that place. Somehow, without knowing it, we brought it inside us…and one day, by chance, we got there” – Antonio Tabucchi
The coastlines on the mainland are like borders along the journey by boat to the Aeolian islands, like they tried to remind us that from that point onwards we need to change our rhythm. As the change of rhythm is key to deeply understand the authenticity and the true essence of this bunch of islands hanging in the Tyrrhenian Sea out of the coasts of Milazzo, a bubble of space outside of time where being is still prevailing on doing.
“A beautiful photograph tells a story, reveals a place, an event, a state of mind, is more powerful than pages and pages written” – Isabel Allende
The attention of the team focused in a meticulous mise en place, the care of the housekeeper watering the flowers on the balcony, the sharing of the staff during the daily morning briefing in the meeting room, the relaxing music of the water sounds in a spa, the precision of the chef’s hands preparing one of the courses on the menu, the silence of soft lights in the hall late at night … they are just some of the situations and atmospheres that describe the life of the hotel and that tells its story.