We begin the day following the duchess through the narrow passages of the vibrant, noisy Capo market. Nicoletta navigates the stalls with the assurance of a regular, explaining that in Sicily a market goer only frequents certain vendors with whom a rapport is well established. “In return for my loyalty they take care of me,” she explains, as she examines the freshness of an enormous tuna, caught that very morning off the island’s west coast. “I know that when I ask them to filet this fish they will not substitute it with an inferior piece.” Nicoletta shares insights into these codes of Palermitani behavior as we fill bags with almonds and lemons and inspect mountains of tomatoes and eggplants. She tells us about fairly recent times when pickpocketing was so rife that the police set up bureaus in tourist hotels to help victims replace their lost documents. “The idea of trying to stop the thefts did not even seem to be an option,” she says with a smile of resignation. Then she takes an unexpected turn into an alley to show off a brilliant Art Nouveau mosaic, gleaming on a broken facade that stands like a skeleton amid a field of rubble.

Many ruins like this still litter the old city, where Allied bombs leveled streets of fine old palaces in 1943. Others were damaged but have been splendidly restored, and some have been left to molder, their marble staircases and fine woodwork either lost to the elements or carted off by scavengers. The Palazzo Lanza Tomasi survived the bombings relatively intact if a bit the worse for wear. Gioacchino began restoring the palace in the 1970s, dislodging hens from the courtyard and eventually reclaiming a labyrinth of rooms. Now, above family living quarters and a floor of stately salons are 12 charming apartments that the duke and duchess rent to short-term guests.

In the palace garden, flourishing beneath lemon and palm trees on an enormous sea-facing terrace built atop Spanish ramparts, we gather herbs and jasmine flowers, ingredients for the lunch we will prepare. Nicoletta walks us through her living room, a casually aristocratic-looking assemblage of comfy, slipcovered couches and armchairs and fine old tables piled high with books, then up a back staircase to the blue-tiled palace kitchen. There, she delegates tasks as we prepare dishes that combine raisins, almonds, currants, cinnamon, and other ingredients of a cuisine that merges the island’s Arab, Spanish, and French heritage. Her repertoire consists mostly of local dishes she’s encountered around the island. One team chops basil for Pasta col Pesto alla Trapanese, a deliciously simple concoction with almonds, tomatoes, and toasted breadcrumbs that the duchess came across 30 years ago on the terrace of the Albergo Paradiso on the island of Levanzo, off Trapani. Another group prepares a thick chickpea batter for panelle. Nicoletta’s special technique for this street-food staple is to scoop the batter into a narrow can from which both ends have been removed and slowly push it through the oiled cylinder and out one end, cutting it into thin slices that are then fried in oil to puffy, golden perfection. We mash anchovies with mint and pistachios and stuff this aromatic paste into slits we pierce in an enormous slab of tuna. No food could be more Sicilian than tuna, Nicoletta explains. Greek colonists were catching these giants 3,000 years ago, though fishermen no longer stage the ages-old mattanza, in which they lured the fish into mazelike labyrinths of nets and butchered them in a bloody frenzy. Dessert is a biancomangiare, a sweet almond-milk pudding garnished with zuccata (candied pumpkin), more pistachios, and jasmine flowers we’ve gathered in the garden.

Our creations seem impressively lavish as white-jacketed footmen serve us in the elegant dining room, where sunlight gleams off the Mediterranean and bathes creamy walls, oil paintings, Murano chandeliers, and majolica. The duke is an engaging conversationalist who glides easily and assuredly from one topic to another, a staging of the Benjamin Britten opera Peter Grimes to the clumsy restoration of La Zisa, the Norman pleasure palace at the edge of the city where an elderly princely cousin once lived, to the maddening quirks of the little elevator he’s installed in one corner of the courtyard. Nicoletta tells the story of the palazzo, where in the mid 19th-century Prince Giulio Fabrizio used to retreat to observe the stars over the sea. He was the great-grandfather of Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa and the model for The Leopard’s main character, the nobleman Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, who witnesses his way of life changing with the Risorgimento. The historical and psychological upheaval is summed up in what is perhaps the novel’s most famous line, “Everything must change for everything to remain the same.” The author moved to this palace in 1943, when bombs leveled his childhood home, the grander Palazzo Lampedusa. He and his wife, Licy, a noblewoman and psychoanalyst who lost her estate in the Baltics to the Nazis then the Soviet army, lived in a few habitable rooms amid dripping ceilings and collapsing walls. They shared a deep longing for the lost homes of their childhoods, and Tomasi di Lampedusa evoked his sprawling ancestral seat in The Leopard with “A house of which one knew every room wasn’t worth living in.” He spent his days in cafes reading and writing and died of lung cancer in 1957, a year before his novel was published.

After lunch the duke and duchess walk us through a suite of salons and libraries, showing off furnishings from various family palaces and sharing stories: of the duke’s fun-loving mother, daughter of a Spanish diplomat and granddaughter of the governor of Cuba, a grandmother whose pet panther used to jump over the garden walls of her Roman villa, a branch that includes saints and mystics. Pride of place belongs to the typewritten manuscript that made its way around Italy’s leading publishing houses before Feltrinelli brought out The Leopard to immediate acclaim in 1958. Luchiano Visconti directed a lavish, color-saturated 1963 film starring Burt Lancaster as the prince, and a ballroom scene was shot in the Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi, just a few blocks away on the pretty Piazza Croce dei Vespri. The novel and film and their Sicilian settings are lush and transporting, but not more so than a day with this amiable duchess in her palace.

A Day Cooking with the Duchess classes cost about $180 a person, including a market expedition, instruction, lunch, and a tour of the palace. Large, character-filled apartments, all with fully equipped kitchens and some with terraces and sea views, sleep from two to six guests and rent from about $95 a night. Visit this site for more information.

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It’s almost impossible not to fall under the spell of this dreamscape where round, domed houses known as trulli rise from gentle hillsides. Alberobello will make you feel like you’ve stepped into the pages of a fairy tale, but this small town in Italy’s southeastern Puglia region is decidedly of this world, fashioned from limestone, surrounded by centuries-old vineyards and olive groves, and home to 11,000 residents. You probably won’t be able to resist the urge to make a crack or two about hobbit houses and how “truly” extraordinary they are, but the Alberobellese have heard it all and they are proud to show off one of the most unique townscapes on the planet.

Domed Wonders

Some 1,600 trulli line the lanes of Alberobello’s old quarters, Rione Monte and Aja Piccola, protected these days as a UNESCO World Heritage site. “How?” (as in “how on earth did this otherworldly place come to be?”) is the first question that comes to mind as you meander into the maze and get a close up look at so many strange-looking whitewashed houses with domed, conical roofs (trullo is from the Greek word for dome). Whimsical as trulli seem, they are borne out of practicality, built without mortar from rough-cut local limestone. Materials for the stone walls and corbelled-slab domes were readily available, and masons could assemble houses quickly and easily. Just as important, they could disassemble them simply by removing a single stone — as local lore has it, a distinct advantage if the Naples-based royal treasury decided to impose taxes on householders. With news of an approaching tax collector the entire town could be made to disappear in Brigadoon-like fashion.

Look Up!

Designs of the pinnacles atop the domed roofs are marks of the masons who built the houses, and slabs are often painted with Christian and magic symbols. Shopkeepers have added modern decorative touches of their own, few more exuberantly than Anna Maria Matarese. She’s filled her shop-in-a-trullo on Via Monte Pertica with fischietti, pottery whistles that include a Fiat weighted down with a family and their belongings. These days trulli also provide some cozily memorable dining experiences beneath their domes. Davide Girolamo of Trullo D’oro and other chefs around town serve delicious variations of cucina povera, or poor cooking, that make the most of local ingredients, though octopus served atop a bed of local fava beans and their other creations seem fit for a king.

One Dome, One Room

Most trulli consist of a single room beneath the domed roof. A peak inside a trullo, especially rewarding when this stage-set of a town mounts a historical reenactment, reveals the hardscrabble practicalities of trullo life — a large fireplace for heating and cooking, alcoves for sleeping, often a loft for storage above and a rainwater-filled cistern beneath the stone floor. A few break the mold with multiple domes and multiple rooms. Trullo Siamese was created when two brothers fell in love with the same woman and joined two trulli to accommodate their unusual living arrangement. Grandest of all is the Trullo Savrano, a complex of 12 little trulli surrounding a central, double-height trullo.

Into the Valle d’Itria and Beyond

Beyond Alberobello, the Valle d’Itria dips and rises across rolling hills that here and there are topped with irresistibly picturesque città bianche, or white towns: Ceglie Messapica, Cisternino, Locorotondo, Martina Franca, and Ostuni. Each will lure you into a few hours of aimless wandering, as will Polignano a Mare on the coast. Polignano’s narrow lanes open to seaside terraces perched above the crashing waves and a pebbly beach hemmed in by cliffs. Don’t be surprised if the setting makes you feels as though you’re taking flight into another realm — after all, Polignano’s famous son is Domenico Mudugno,  honored with a statue, and these vistas of sea and sky inspired his song “Volare.” Egnazia, farther down the coast, is an ancient Roman town bisected by the Via Traiana, the road that linked Rome with the port at Brindisi. One of Italy’s many transporting archeological experiences is a descent into Egnazia’s Tomb of the Pomegranates, from the 4^th to 2^nd century B.C. and entered through a stone door that still swings on its original hinges.

Among this abundance of sights, trulli steal the show. They stud fields and groves across the countryside, built on the spot from gathered stones to provide shelter and storage. Spotting one of these humble structures never fails to provide a world-class thrill.

For more information check out the Arteca website and the City of Alberobello website.

Stephen Brewer is an author of Frommer’s Italy and many other guidebooks.

Elyse Weiner is an Emmy Award-winning network news producer and executive, and the creator of iJOURNEYS audio walking tours of cities across Europe.

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How was your journey? The Gambardella family, several generations of whom are usually on the scene, have been asking this question ever since they began welcoming guests to their villa-like retreat on the edge of a cliff along the legendary Amalfi Coast of southern Italy in 1904. It’s understandable if some of their arrivals are at a loss to sum up the hair-raising trip along the famed Amalfi Drive. This narrow ribbon of pavement and hairpins floats hundreds of feet above the churning surf. The writer John Steinbeck described the route as “hooked and corkscrewed on the edge of nothing” and confessed that “in the back seat my wife and I lay clutched in each other’s arms, weeping hysterically.” Even so, he found the coast, where entire villages cling improbably to green hillsides that plunge into the blue Mediterranean, to be “a dream place that isn’t quite real.” Another writer, Gore Vidal, lived in a cliffside aerie in nearby Ravello, and he abandoned his typical churlishness to say he was blessed with “the most beautiful view in the world.” You’ll probably come to some of the same conclusions when you take a seat on one of the many terraces, sip a chilled Prosecco, and surrender to the sensation of being suspended here between sea and sky — or the sense that you’ve stumbled onto the set of a very stylish movie.

The Amalfi Coast is one of the most beautiful, glamorous, legendary, gossip-soaked strips of land anywhere, the haunt of film stars and poets, the rich and famous, exiled royals and pretenders, bigwigs and flaneurs, lovers and lotharios, and plenty of ordinary folks just looking to relax in style. Everyone feels right at home in these sprawling, tile-floored lounges and vine-laced dining rooms. In these swell surroundings you wouldn’t be too surprised if the bejeweled woman at the next table purred, “Gimme a whisky . . . ginger ale on the side . . . and don’t be stingy, baby,” or if a well-tanned gent ordered a martini, shaken, not stirred. The white-jacketed attendants, who seem to know every guest by name, will be just as solicitous as you wrestle with a decision to have the sea bass salted and baked or simply grilled or if you should indulge in the lemon soufflé for dessert.

“I need something truly beautiful to look at in hotel rooms,” said actress Vivien Leigh, who used to vacation in these parts. She would find plenty to admire in the 66 rooms and suites, each different, that ramble through the main house and are tucked into gardens fragrant with oranges and lemons. Furnishings are homey rather than ostentatious, enlivened with a smattering of family heirlooms, and warm whites are accented with Mediterranean hues that offset glistening hand-painted tile floors. Many of the deep bathtubs have sea views, and you might just be tempted to call room service and order a bottle of Champagne as you settle in for a long soak. These are the sorts of digs to which Greta Garbo yearned to retreat when in the film Grand Hotel she famously said, “I want to be alone.” Actually, Garbo and her lover, the conductor Leopold Stokowski, once hid out in a villa up the mountainside in Ravello. They probably would have been just as content in the Giulietta e Romeo Chalet, a hidden garden cottage dripping with bougainvillea and jasmine, or for that matter any other accommodation here.

A Bond-worthy glassed-in elevator whooshes 10-stories down a rock face to a cove that shelters the beach club. You expect to run into Cary Grant and Grace Kelly down here, lying around in beach togs as they do in To Catch a Thief.  Adding to the laidback glamor is an army of Polo-attired attendants who appear with a towel and bottle of water the moment you climb out the sea or saltwater pool. Settle in with a house made Limoncello and you can almost see Odysseus sailing by—legend has it that as he plied these waters he had himself bound to the mast to prevent him from answering the lure of Sirens promising “love, sweeter than honey.”  It’s easy to understand how he might have succumbed to local pleasures. You might also imagine that you’ve stumbled into a scene from Evil Under the Sun. You know, the lush film of the Agatha Christie thriller in which Maggie Smith is a former actress and royal courtesan who looks after a bunch of spoiled toffs at her seaside villa-turned-guesthouse. Thing is, it’s hard to imagine anything evil happening under this sun.

Hotel Santa Caterina is perched on a clifftop less than a mile outside Amalfi, at S.S. Amalfitana 9. The hotel is open from mid-April through early November. Visit their website for more information.

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The campaign for the Italian peninsula began in July 1943, with landings on the southern coast of Sicily. More Allied forces came ashore in Salerno in September, then on the beaches at Anzio and neighboring Nettuno on January 22, 1944, when 36,000 Allied troops established the so-called Anzio beachhead. The Allies met fierce German resistance and became entrenched on muddy coastal plains and in high mountain passes as they moved north toward Rome, liberating the city on June 4, 1944.

Of the 60,000 to 70,000 members of the Allied forces who died in the Italian campaign, 7,860 or close to 8,000 are buried on these lawns that slope gently above a large reflecting pool. A marble wall in the chapel is inscribed with another 3,095 names of the missing. Among those buried here are William and Preston Kaspervik, one of 30 sets of brothers in the cemetery, and Ellen Ainsworth, a nurse killed by enemy fire while moving surgical patients to safety in a field hospital; she is one of 16 women interred at Nettuno. As former president Dwight D. Eisenhower said when he dedicated the cemetery in 1956, hose interred here rest tranquil and secure in the friendly soil of Italy.

Veterans Day Commemorations

As Veterans Day approaches, travel-inclined descendants of World War II veterans might set their sights on visits to the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery or the other military cemeteries that the American Battle Monuments Commission maintains around the world. In total, the ABMC commemorates 207,621 U.S. war dead from World War I and World War II. The most visited site is the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France, with a million visitors a year. The website www.abmc.gov provides information on ABMC’s 26 cemeteries and 32 memorials and monuments, as well as a searchable database for service members interred in the cemeteries.

If you go to Nettuno

The Sicily-Rome American Cemetery is at the eastern edge of Nettuno, off Piazzale John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It’s about a ten-minute walk from the train station, where trains from Rome arrive at least hourly; the trip takes an hour and ten minutes. The cemetery is open daily except December 25 and January 1 from 9am to 5pm. An excellent visitor center details the Italian campaign with maps, photo displays, and videos, and also profiles some of those commemorated in the cemetery. In addition to the burial area, the cemetery includes a chapel, a map room in which bronze and marble reliefs show Allied World War II operations in Italy, and a couple of beautifully tended gardens.

Nettuno’s seaside old quarter, the Borgo Medievale, is an enticing warren of lanes and squares. Zero Miglia on Piazza Marconi is a local favorite for a seafood meal, accompanied by a bottle of Cacchione, the region’s white wine. I Nobili, practically next door, is the stop for gelato. To enjoy some time in the sun, you can rent a lounge at one of the many beach clubs that line the sands of Nettuno and neighboring Anzio. Ex-pat and local guide Paula Clark ( mc********@ao*.com ) can show you around town and provide lots of insightful commentary.

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Book written by Alec Lobrano

As Audrey Hepburn once famously said “Paris is always a good idea,” and among those who have taken this advice to heart is the American food writer Alec Lobrano. In his delightful, witty, and at times moving memoir he recounts his 35 years in Paris, where “food would become my muse, my metaphor, and my map for making a place for myself in the world.”

The author arrived in the city as a fashion reporter, though he knew and cared little about the subject and as a colleague pointed out, his French was a “train wreck.” This rebuke comes after he talks his bosses into letting him do a story on the legendary cheesemonger Henri Androuët, whom he tells that his cheeses should be nailed to the walls of the Louvre. He nonetheless writes a compelling piece about Monsieur Androuët and his wares, then one about oysters, and he earnestly sets out to learn more about the food around him. His landlady, a countess, wisely advises him, The first thing you’ll have to learn is how to decipher a cook’s intentions.” A clerk at his local post office tips him off to exciting new restaurants opening around the city.

Mr. Lobrano soon makes a name for himself as a food critic, with a knack for sniffing out Parisian chefs who in the 1990s were ushering in something of a revolution by combining French haute cuisine, bistro dishes, and rustic regional cooking. At the same time, he learns the ropes of Parisian life, including the obligatory payoff to a crabby concierge, who remains undeterred in her disdain for him. He holds his own during a soulless meal with Giorgio Armani and defies him by asking the waiter to spoon garlic sauce onto his mushrooms, despite the designer’s protestation that “garlic is so vulgar.” At a dinner party in the hotel particulier of Madame la Baronne Marie-Hélène de Rothschild he overcomes his native shyness and makes small talk with Princess Caroline and Yves Saint-Laurent. As he good-naturedly recounts, he also offends one of the guests by referring to her handsome young husband as her son, and his hostess reprimands him for cutting the head off a camembert, a faux-pas at a Parisian dinner table.

With Bruno, his partner of many years, Mr. Lobrano shares the meal he ranks as the best he’s ever had in Paris, at the Michelin three-starred Restaurant Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athenée. Reading his astute perceptions of this meal and many others he’s enjoyed over the decades, it’s easy to appreciate why he’s such a respected critic. We are quite willing to indulge him with a few excesses. His description of “a soft, creamy chicken-liver terrine that was as earthy and satisfying as sex in a barn” makes us more curious about the encounter that inspired this simile than about the food, and a “dessert with the soft skin of an elderly man” just does not seem very appetizing.

He soars when he describes a meal of apple soup and roast chicken in a farmhouse kitchen in Normandy, or recalls sitting around a bistro after hours to drink Riesling with an Alsatian chef, “the first real friend I’d had with whom I could talk about food.” Their talk of choucroute garnie, with sausages from a butcher near Colmar, homemade foie gras, and flammekueche makes us want to linger over a meal in Paris, and instilling such longings, of course, is Mr. Lobrano’s stock in trade. Should we wish to partake, he includes a list of his 30 favorite Paris restaurants at the end of the book.

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Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

Albergo Regina Isabella, Ischia, Italy, The Liz Taylor Suite

“Our love is so furious that we will burn each other out.” — Richard Burton

I really don’t remember much about Cleopatra. There were a lot of other things going on.— Elizabeth Taylor

The seaside charms and bubbling thermal baths of the island of Ischia have long been a draw for literary types (Henrik Ibsen, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams), movie stars (Marlon Brando, Brigitte Bardot, Charlie Chaplin, Jennifer Lopez, Leonardo DiCaprio), and other glitterati (Soren Kierkegaard and Prince Charles). None of these visitors, though, has made as big of a splash as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton did when they sailed over to Ischia to film the barge scenes for the 1963 blockbuster Cleopatra. Both were married to other people (she for the fourth time, to Eddie Fisher, who had left Debbie Reynolds for her) and their much-photographed affair was a salacious scandal of which a rapt public could not get enough. The Vatican cited Taylor for “erotic vagrancy” and there was talk that the United States was going to ban entry to the pair. Photos of the lovers sunning on a yacht and swimming in Ischia’s clear blue waters pushed the Space Race and other headlines off the front pages.

Taylor and Burton escaped the prying eyes and lenses of the paparazzi in a seaside suite at the Regina Isabella, in the seaside village of Lacco Ameno. The glamorous resort was already on the jet-set map as a retreat for the likes of Clark Gable and Maria Callas, and the power couple enjoyed royal treatment in what is now known as the Liz Taylor Suite, a sprawling, sun-filled spread with a regal salon and bedroom, huge terrace, and two marble-clad bathrooms fit for Cleopatra herself. No doubt the lapping waters of the Bay of San Montano and scent of pines was a soothing antidote to the stars’ rigorous filming schedule and tumultuous personal lives.

Cleopatra, meanwhile, became the most expensive film ever made (more than $300 million in today’s dollars). For all the expense, fanfare, reasonable box office success, and four Academy Awards, many critics found the epic to be mundane and lumbering. Even Liz, who made $7 million off the film, said she found the three-hour-long version released in theaters to be “vulgar.”

The couple’s allure began to ebb as they became notorious for their boozing and fighting and married and divorced each other twice. Most of the star vehicles the pair made after Cleopatra were disappointing, with the exception of the brilliant Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). For many viewers, the story of a volatile, alcohol-soaked marriage mirrors the lives of the stars, and Taylor won her second Academy Award for best actress.

Just around the coast from the Regina Isabella is a tribute to another well-known, much more subdued couple, the British composer Sir William Walton and his Argentine wife, Lady Susana Walton. The pair created a stir when the 46-year-old year old Walton wooed and won Susana, 24 years his junior, annoying her father so much that he spent her entire dowry on Champagne for their wedding reception in Buenos Aires. They settled on Ischia in 1949 and created one of the world’s great gardens, Villa La Mortella, filled with exotic plantings and splashing fountains, a perfect getaway from worldly affairs.

For more information, visit Regina Isabella.

Ava Gardner

Hotel Splendido, Portofino, Italy, The Ava Gardner Suite

I was born with good health and a strong body and spent years abusing them. —  Ava Gardner

By the early 1950s, residents of picturesque Portofino on the Ligurian Coast had figured out that there was a lot more money to be made from landing movie stars and other beautiful people than from hauling in fish. The man about town in those days was Rex Harrison. He had fashioned a luxurious villa on the remnants of a World War II era bunker high above the Bay of Portofino, where he entertained the likes of Clarke Gable and the duke and duchess of Windsor. So, it wasn’t too surprising to see Ava Gardner sail into the harbor and settle into the Splendido, a former monastery turned lavish hotel.  Gardner was at the height of her stardom, having won acclaim for her roles in such hits as Show Boat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), and Mogambo (1953). The high-living, hard-drinking, chain-smoking star came to Portofino to shoot scenes for The Barefoot Contessa (1954), with the pretty little town serving as a backdrop for her escapades with a Latin American playboy. With Gardner came costar Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall. Not accompanying her was her husband, Frank Sinatra, from whom the star was increasingly estranged, nor her lover, the Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin.

Gardner’s role in The Barefoot Contessa, as a beautiful girl who rises from obscurity to become a famous star, was not far from her own life story. In fact, like her character, Gardner preferred to go barefoot, and she could comfortably do so on the huge terrace of the top-floor suite named after her. The views across the water to the pastel-hued houses hugging a snug harbor are unchanged from Gardner’s day. You can just about make out the spot in front of La Gritta bar where Harrison staggered onto the wharf after a night of celebrating his best-actor win for My Fair Lady in 1964 and threw his Oscar into the harbor.

Gardner went on to make several other well-received films, including The Sun Also Rises (1957) and On the Beach (1959). In 1963, she traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to film Night of the Iguana. Her costar, Richard Burton, arrived with Elizabeth Taylor, and the trio’s off-screen antics inspired a parody by comedian Allan Sherman, sung to the tune of The Streets of Laredo: “They did things at night midst the flora and fauna that no self-respecting iguana would do.”  Gardner, Burton, and Taylor had more than their film careers and fondness for alcohol in common—of all the places the stars touched down on their international travels, the Splendido in little Portofino remained a preferred hideaway for the three of them, as it still is for the rich and famous.

For more information, visit the  Hotel Splendido.

Audrey Hepburn

Hotel Hassler, Rome, The San Pietro Suite

The most important thing is to enjoy your life, to be happy. It’s all that matters. —  Audrey Hepburn

Filmgoers will forever associate Rome with Audrey Hepburn, who buzzed around the Eternal City on the back of a Vespa in the 1953 classic Roman Holiday. Almost 70 years later, it’s still difficult to put your hand into the Bocca della Verità without thinking of Gregory Peck (Joe Bradley) screaming in mock pain as a terrified Hepburn (Princess Ann) looks on.

For Hepburn, Rome was synonymous not with ruins and fountains but with the Hotel Hassler, as it has been with generations of discerning travelers.  The star stayed at this hostelry at the top of the Spanish Steps while filming the story of a princess who enjoys a footloose romp with a dashing journalist, and she returned many times until her death in 1993. Managing Director Roberto Wirth, as much of a legend as many of his distinguished guests, says, “Her grace and elegance fascinated me … I remember her as a fairytale princess when she came down the Hassler’s stairs.”

Judging by her films, Hepburn might have seemed most at home in France (Charade, Funny Face, How to Steal A Million, Sabrina, Two for the Road), and she once famously said, “Paris is always a good idea.” But for much of the Belgian-born star’s life, Rome was where her heart was. Soon after the end of Hepburn’s14-year-long marriage to fellow actor Mel Ferrer, she married psychiatrist Andrea Dotti in 1969 and retreated from films and the limelight for a new role as a Roman housewife and mother. That marriage dissolved in 1982 and Hepburn took up residence in Switzerland, where she happily grew roses when she was not traveling the world on behalf of UNICEF.

Hepburn frequently returned to Rome to visit her son, Lucca Andrea Dotti, often settling into the Hassler’s San Pietro Suite. The rich paneling, Old World paintings, priceless antiques, and acres of marble might have been handpicked for the classy and elegant icon. Anyone, star or not, who stands on the airy terrace and looks across the rooftops toward the dome of St. Peter’s might be tempted to quote one of Audrey’s lines from Roman Holiday, “I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.”

For more information, visit  Hotel Hassler.

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Celebrity Hotel Rooms and Suites, Part 3

Katharine Hepburn:

Rosellen Suites at Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia – The Katharine Hepburn Penthouse Suite

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun. – Katharine Hepburn

The Katharine Hepburn Penthouse Suite at Rosellen Suites, Stanley Park, Vancouver.
Photo courtesy of Rosellen Suites.

Katharine Hepburn was an outdoorsy type. We saw her navigating the rapids in The African Queen and sharpshooting in Rooster Cogburn, and throughout the star’s 60-plus-years-long career magazines and newspapers were filled with photos of her sailing, playing tennis, and plunging into the icy waters of the Long Island Sound.

Yet by 1986, when Hepburn was nearing 80, she was content to enjoy the great outdoors from the comfort of a sprawling penthouse at the Rosellen Suites in Vancouver, British Columbia. She came to Vancouver that year to film Mrs. Delafield  Wants to Marry, a made-for-television romance in which she appears opposite the grandfatherly Harold Gould. The comfortably innocuous film was nominated for an Emmy but is fairly forgettable among Hepburn’s big hits and Oscar-winning performances. The city, though, and these lodgings in the city’s West End, were a smash with Hepburn. She fell in love with the sweeping views across Stanley Park and the harbor to the dramatic backdrop of the North Shore Mountains, and she returned to the suite many times over the years to soak them in.

The dining area at the Katharine Hepburn Penthouse Suite at Rosellen Suites.
Photograph courtesy of Rosellen Suites.

Hepburn’s two-bedroom, two-bath digs can make any guest feel like a star on a stage set. They spread across almost 2,000 square feet and open to a similarly sized terrace. Decor is pleasantly evocative of the Golden Age of Hollywood and might remind fans of Tess Harding’s sleek apartment in Woman of the Year. A wood-burning fireplace fends off the chill when clouds and drizzle roll in across the Strait of Georgia, and a crowd of up to a hundred can comfortably gather around the wet bar in the expansive living room-dining room-study.

By all accounts, Hepburn was a gracious and well-mannered guest, and the hotel has honored her legacy by naming her favorite lodgings the Katherine Hepburn Penthouse Suite. For more information, contact www.rosellensuites.com.

Salvador Dali:

Le Meurice, Paris, France, Presidential Apartment Dali

There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction. – Salvador Dali

Portraits of Salvador Dali taken in his suite at the Hôtel Maurice in Paris. (1972). Photographs courtesy Hôtel Maurice.

Salvador Dali was a sensation from the time he arrived in Paris, in 1926 at the age of 22. The promising Spanish painter, accompanied by a pet ocelot, was soon consorting with Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, René Magritte, and other avant-garde artists and thinkers. He showed off his many talents and unique vision in Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) a film he directed with Luis Buñel in which a scene of a razor slicing through an eyeball has kept art-house audiences squirming in their seats since it’s debut in 1929. The Persistence of Memory, his 1931 painting of melting pocket watches, is one of the most iconic works of surrealism.

Dali, a famously eccentric figure on the international art scene until his death in 1989, returned from self-imposed exile in New York during World War II and occupied a suite at Le Meurice in Paris for a month or two a year for the next 30 years. His wife and muse, the Russian immigrant Elena Dmitrievna Diakonova, aka Gala, remained in her castle in Spain, where she enjoyed the companionship of much younger men and allowed Dali to visit only upon invitation. The Meurice staff was used to catering to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the duke and duchess of Windsor, a long list of kings and queens and other famous guests but none were as quirky as the artist with the flamboyant mustache.

Dali shared his palatial quarters with a pet cheetah and, on one occasion, a flock of sheep, and he sometimes navigated the hallways on a bicycle. The ever-patient management reportedly drew the line and said no when the artist called the concierge and requested a horse be delivered to his quarters, but the staff gladly accepted the challenge when he offered 5 francs (about $1) for every live fly they caught in the adjoining Tuileries Gardens and brought up to the suite. The artist regularly presented autographed works as tips, and the wily bon vivant would write checks to pay for meals then draw doodles on them, knowing that no one would cash what was bound to become a valuable collector’s item.

Dali’s preferred quarters are now known as the Presidential Apartment Dali, with two reception rooms that, bedecked in 18th-century grandeur and filled with antiques and silk rugs on shining parquet floors, overlook the Tuileries through tall French windows. Rates begin at about $8,500 a night, and it’s unlikely the management will accept one of your signed doodles as payment.

Gwyneth Paltrow:

Capri Palace, Jumeirah, Capri -The Presidential Paltrow Suite

What I’ve learned is I want to enjoy my life. – Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow smiled at me once, and we’ve stayed at the same hotel on Capri. The smile and hotel stays were not concurrent.

Gwyneth flashed me a big, friendly grin when we sat at adjoining tables at my favorite restaurant in New York City. This was a while ago, long before Gwyneth started promoting vagina-scented candles on her wellness website Goop and was a fresh young star getting acclaim for her performances in Emma and Shakespeare in Love. The friend with whom I was dining was also enjoying considerable fame as the author of a wildly popular book and he was convinced the smile was a sign of recognition from the actress, a knowing nod from one celeb to another. I took no small pleasure in bursting his balloon to explain that it was clear the actress was apologizing for the boisterous behavior of her companion, Ben Affleck, who in those pre-rehab days was sloppily inebriated.

So, I felt a certain bond with Gwyneth when I learned that she has a suite named after her at the Capri Palace Hotel, where I have also stayed. My brief sojourn at the hotel in a garden-view double was delightful, but as far as I know my name does not adorn the door of a celebrity suite. My partner and I made our non-celeb status pretty clear from the moment we staggered into the soothing art-filled lobby, sweating and wrinkled after squeezing onto the compact bus that runs from the port up to Anacapri. It never occurred to me that the hotel would be sending a car to meet us at the boat. Meanwhile, the guest in front of me at the check-in desk was demanding to know the registration number and credentials of the helicopter pilot who was scheduled to whisk him up the coast to Rome. The polished and friendly staff extended the same solicitude to me when I said I would pass on hiring a private motor launch for a cruise around the island but would like to know where to board a rowboat for a ride through the Blue Grotto.

But back to Gwyneth. On Goop she has rather infamously claimed that water has feelings, too, just like us, and that sort-of- kinda makes sense when standing on the vast terrace of the Gwyneth Paltrow Suite looking across the shimmering Mediterranean. The watery love fest continues in the two private pools, and a portrait of Gwyneth stares up from the bottom of the larger of them. Guests, meanwhile, can look up to the heavens through a skylight above the bed in the marble-bedecked master bedroom that, like the rest of the sprawling spread, is designed to reflect “a new classy elegance,” according to owner/manager Tonino Cacace. A night of stargazing in such style will set you back about $7,000 in high season. Hey, that’s a bargain compared to the $18,000 a night Paltrow and her husband, Brad Falchuk, reportedly forked over for their honeymoon hideaway at the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris. For more information, contact www.capripalace.com.

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Shall we just get the pleasantries out of the way? Capri is a lovely little island that floats in the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Naples and where the air is scented with bougainvillea that tumbles in wild abandon over the garden walls of white-washed villas. Blah, blah, blah. Not that I’m immune to the natural beauty of this island, and I have enjoyed many long walks beneath pine trees out to Punta Tragara and refreshing dips beneath the sea cliffs at the Faraglioni, but on this rock it’s the human fauna, warts and all, that I find to be especially intriguing.

Capri, you see, has long attracted bohemians, libertines, and the outright scandalous. The novelist D.H. Lawrence grumpily complained that the island was “a gossipy, villa-stricken, two-humped chunk of limestone that does heaven much credit but mankind none at all.” I lean toward amused fascination, not despair, about humankind when I sit in the Piazzetta, the main square of Capri Town. Day trippers troop through, water bottles in one hand, iPhones at the ready for selfies in the other, and alongside them are leggy models who strut around as if on a Milan runway, a scattering of lotharios, easy to spot in rumpled linen, and many well-dressed, cappuccino-drinking bon vivants who might be accountants and marketing execs in real life but in this setting become flaneurs and flaneuses.  The writer Joseph Conrad also got carried away with the island’s undercurrents when, quite possibly sitting at a cafe table in this square, he wrote, “The scandals of Capri — atrocious, unspeakable, amusing scandals, international, cosmopolitan, and biblical flavored with Yankee twang and the French phrases of the gens du monde mingle with the tinkling of guitars in the barber’s shops.”

Capri has been synonymous with licentiousness since the Emperor Tiberius took up residence in a cliff-top palace in A.D 26. According to contemporary reports, he engaged in “depravities . . . so flagrant one can scarcely bear to report or hear them.” But since no one can resist passing on some good dish, especially about a public figure, news soon spread that the dark and mercurial emperor was having lovers of whom he’d tired hurled off the cliffs. Another dissolute, the Baron Jacques d’Adelsward-Fersen, took up residence in a villa a little way down the same hillside in 1905. He came to the island after some time in prison for an episode involving schoolboys, and he brought with him his lover, Nino Cesarini, a model for erotic photographs and paintings. The baron spent his time writing really bad verse and almost unreadable stream of consciousness prose, but he excelled at taking debauchery to extremes. He died while sipping cocaine-infused Champagne in a room he had designed to resemble a Chinese opium den. Nino did well for himself after the baron’s death and opened a bar and newsstand in Rome with the money he inherited.

Probably the island’s most famous scandal is the one associated with Friedrich Alfred Krupp, the German steel and arms manufacturer. Money and power could not silence reports of Krupp’s orgies and other dalliances on Capri, and he committed suicide in 1902 when faced with a trial and many years of hard labor. He’s lent his name to the beautiful Via Krupp, a steep lane of switchbacks that connects the Giardini di Augusto, designed and financed by Krupp, with Marina Piccola, where he moored his two yachts. Amidst the garden’s lush greenery stands a statue of Vladimir Lenin. The revolutionary and first premier of the Soviet Union seems a bit out of place in such luxuriant and hedonistic surroundings, but he admired the island when he stayed here as a guest of his co-patriot, the writer Maxim Gorky, in 1908.

It would be easy to go on and on gossip-mongering, but it seems only fair also to mention some island residents who have been above reproach, or almost. Axel Munthe, a Swedish physician and ornithologist, is still the island’s golden boy, having settled into the airy and enchanting Villa San Michele in 1887. Oh, you could dig up a few skeletons in the doctor’s closet, like his lifelong devotion to Princess Victoria (later Queen) of Sweden, to whom he prescribed spending a lot of time in his company on Capri. All in all, though, Munthe is an uplifting character, and he was beloved for some truly altruistic acts, like treating poor islanders for free, coming to the aid of Neapolitans during a cholera epidemic, and taking in a menagerie of stray animals. Plus, he penned some pretty memorable thoughts, like “The soul needs more space than the body.” That will make perfect sense when you take in the views of this legendary island from the airy and light-filled rooms where Munthe spent most of his life.

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The two volumes (sold separately for $24.95 each) introduce you to the 110 best public gardens on the West Coast, from Vancouver, British Columbia, to San Diego. These landscapes are not only rich in marvelous plants and ornamental detail but they also say a lot about the people who created them. Lotusland near Santa Barbara is the legacy of Ganna Walska, a many times married Polish opera singer (and not a very good one, confides Olson) who described herself as “the enemy of the average” and sold off her jewels to pay for magnificent cycads that continue to flourish. The gardens at the Huntington Library, outside Los Angeles in San Marino, were among the passions of Henry E. Huntington, a railroad heir who became even wealthier when he married his aunt (yes, quite a scandal) and collected art, rare manuscripts, and the world’s largest collection of cacti and succulents. Portland’s Japanese Garden is the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan, and planted in the 1960s, is a testimony to the restoration of goodwill between World War II adversaries.

If one garden captures the spirit of the men and women who fashioned these magical landscapes and worked the soil to bring a little more beauty into the world, it’s probably Alcatraz. The famous prison in San Francisco Bay, erstwhile home of Al Capone and Bugsy Malone, is reminiscent of a Mediterranean isle. That’s because the warden’s secretary Fred Reichel and inmate Elliott Michener (a convicted counterfeiter) transformed the Rock into rose gardens and succulent plots — a testimony, says Olson, to the “human need to connect with nature and create beauty under even the harshest conditions.” You’ll feel this magic every time you follow any one of his excellent recommendations.

Filoli, Woodside, California
The name reflects the credo of founder William Bowers Bourn, “To fight for a just cause; to love your fellow man; to live a good life” (take the first two letters of “fight,” “love,” and “live”). Among these 16 acres of formal gardens south of San Francisco, surrounded by mountain and valley views, are lawns, outdoor rooms framed by brick walls and hedges, a sunken garden with a reflecting pool, and a Golden Age mansion.

The name reflects the credo of founder William Bowers Bourn, “To fight for a just cause; to love your fellow man; to live a good life” (take the first two letters of “fight,” “love,” and “live”). Among these 16 acres of formal gardens south of San Francisco, surrounded by mountain and valley views, are lawns, outdoor rooms framed by brick walls and hedges, a sunken garden with a reflecting pool, and a Golden Age mansion.

Virginia Robinson Gardens, Beverly Hills
The wife of a department store heir created the first estate in the now-famously posh enclave, planting lush gardens on what were once lima bean fields.  The dining room of her Italianate mansion overlooks a palm forest, inspired, like most of the plantings, by a honeymoon voyage through Europe, India, and Kashmir.

Lotusland, Santa Barbara
As Olson writes, “when it comes to garden as theater, garden as glamor, and garden as diva” this world-class garden stands alone. Among the highlights are giant aloes and cacti and one of the greatest cycad collections in the world.

Sunnylands, Palm Springs
With the bright yellow flowers of palo verde trees, green lawns, and a blue reflecting pool, these desert-oasis gardens are said to be an homage to Vincent Van Gogh’s “Olive Trees.” That’s no coincidence, because the painting once hung in the mid-century modern home at the center of this estate, the winter retreat of publishing mogul and diplomat Walter Annenberg.

Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island, Washington State
What seems like a grand English estate is the Pacific Northwest home of a mid-20^th century timber baron, a ferry-ride across Puget Sound from Seattle. Native mosses and other plantings are woven into a forested maritime landscape.

Lan Su Chinese Garden, Portland, Oregon
The best and most authentic Chinese garden outside China replicates an urban style that flourished around 500 years ago during the Ming dynasty. Serpentine walkways surround a lake and lead to pavilions and halls.

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