Experiencing a hotel that transmits us its heritage, its tradition, and its design is one of the sensations I cherish the most.
Knowing I’m in a hotel in Florence right beside the Arno river and the Vecchio bridge makes me very happy! Also knowing that hotel belongs to a group of luxury hotels created by the emblematic Salvatore Ferragamo is even more exciting!
So it was our stay at the Gallery Hotel Art of Lungarno Collection.
Salvatore Ferragamo left Italy at sixteen to start his adventure in the United States, a few years later, in 1927 he returned, to Florence, to take his success of “shoemaker” of the Hollywood stars, and take it to a more refined level, with the Florentine tradition quite present.
Eleven years later he opened his first store next to the Arno, and from there all his inspiration revealed to create, with the renowned architect Michele Bonan, the luxurious hotels of the Lungarno Collection. Hotels with a refined sense of hospitality and personality, transmitting the fundamental values of the Ferragamo family, “compromise. consistency and continuity”.
The group owns several hotels, five of them in Florence (Hotel Lungarno, Portrait Firenze, Continental, Lungarno Apartments and this one I’m talking about today), one in Rome (Portrait Roma) and two in Tuscany (Villa Le Rose and Resort Baia Scarlino), and also many restaurants, and yacht experiences (Nautor´s Swan Yachts).
So we stayed in the Gallery Hotel Art, as the name indicates it is quite dedicated to art! Also keeping fashion and lifestyle present in each moment, as they define themselves: “a place to see and be seen!”.
First Impression
What first impression can you get from a hotel located in front of the Vecchio bridge? The best, obviously! The Gallery Hotel Art is a design hotel of four stars in which art is present in every detail.
As soon as we arrive, before entering, we can appreciate the cosmopolitan environment of the Fusion Bar & Restaurant.
We enter and the lobby and reception demonstrate very well the contemporaneity of the hotel, given essentially by the art pieces present in a retrospective of the artist Simone D´auria, since 2013, that only remained until 2016. But other works and artists will follow.
We are immediately drawn to those pieces, one of them a tribute to the wonderful Philippe Stark and his iconic Juicy Salif.
The team welcomed us in a relaxed way, but elegant at the same time and quickly took care of our check-in.
Before going to the bedroom I still had a peek to the library room (and breakfast, I would find out the next morning!), contemporary decoration and some more brilliant art details.
Bedrooms
There are 74, and we stayed in a Studio of the size of an house! A room with 40m2, constituted by the bedroom, the bathroom, a living room, and also a very cozy terrace.
Similar to the rest of the hotel, the bedroom breathed art in each corner, with a contemporary decoration and very welcoming.
In the bathroom I was able to access some of the best products you can get in a hotel – the exclusive line Tuscan Soul from Salvatore Ferragamo (with a lip balm I’m still dreaming about!).
As a welcoming treat, we had Italian chocolate, very tasty!
Restaurants
The Hotel has two gastronomic options, the Fusion Bar & Restaurant, with a cosmopolitan environment, and a contagious joy making us want to go in. Serves Nikkei food and Sushi and also Cocktails, and it’s a space to relax while we taste flavors of the world, more precisely from Japan combined with Peru and with a Mediterranean touch!
The other space is the library I was talking about. An unpretentious place, elegant, with a calmer environment than the other one, to enjoy breakfast, a tea or a snack during the day.
Besides these spaces inside the hotel, the guests have the opportunity to experience other restaurants of the group, as it was our case, we had an experience at Caffè dell´Oro, with one of the best views over the city, the Vecchio bridge!
The restaurant is part of The Portrait Firenze, inserted in the same complex of our hotel, so the trip from one to the other is just a few steps.
Here we tasted a very Italian influenced cuisine, marked by the cosmopolitan environment and decoration. And to start, a great and fresh cocktail of Vodka, Gin, Lime, cucumber and ginger.
Followed Porcini mushroom bruschettas, with burrata, peppers and truffle, served generously and filled with that classic taste of the Italian cuisine.
And because they were in season, the wonderful white truffles arrived at the table with a great pasta. Sinful!
For sure one of the best gastronomical options next to the Vecchio bridge!
Services
Despite Gallery Art Hotel being a four stars, luxury is not left aside in any moment.
And if something is not available at the hotel, it’ll for sure be in one of the hotels of the group, all nearby.
Lungarno Collection offers true experiences to live the city in a more overwhelming way, like for example the tours organized about all the steps from Dan Brown’s Inferno, or simply tours in some of the most important museums of the city, like the Uffizi.
Although not looking like it, it could also transform into a true business or event hotel, and to that, nothing better than the library space. To those wishing for something even more memorable, the Palazzo Capponi has the right room, the refined space that translates perfectly the beauty of the renaissance, and just a few minutes away from the hotel.
Service
The team is young and joyful, not unpretentious and relaxed, but in any moment some of that relaxation overlaps the care towards the client.
The hotel transmits a gaiety atmosphere, and the art revealing in every detail makes it even more exciting.
The services correspond to a five-star hotel because when the Gallery Hotel Art can’t respond to a request, one of its “brothers” will satisfy the client’s wish.
The location is perfect, the ambiance is cosmopolitan and art is Queen!
Another important detail about service is the celerity with which they solve problems, and here enters my story and my usual forgetfulness – I left a coat in the hotel, that a few hours later contacted me to expedite shipping, and I received it a few days later at home in perfect condition.
Effectively the Group Grupo Lungarno Collection leaves nothing to chance, the beauty, the attention to detail the tradition, the art, the history, all thought to detail and assures a wide selection of options from the most classic to the most contemporary, because travelers are not all the same, and it’s necessary to privilege the identity of every person.
Gallery Hotel Art – Lungarno Collection
Bedrooms from 200€
Vicolo dell’Oro, 5 – Florence
+39 055 272 63
gallery@lungarnocollection.com
Photos: Flavors & Senses
Disclaimer
We were at the Gallery Hotel Art by invitation of the Lungarno Collection, whereas this does not alter our work, being the opinion and the text of the exclusive responsibility of the author.