Remember me
I was just old enough to remember when I set foot in Italy for the first time. I was alongside my very large Italian family, on a journey to Ferentino, my grandpa's hometown. It's a small village west of Rome, overflowing with churches and hills and shutter doors and all the markings of an old world that you just hope will never disappear. I felt all the things you should feel from a well-planned Italian getaway: the deep history, the pride of its people, and how the food just tastes better.
It took me entirely too long (thirteen red-sauce-starved years, to be exact) to return. I visited two of the hotels you'll see on this list—Milan's Hotel Calimala and Puglia's Vista Ostuni—praying to every cross that my memories weren't colored by my first sip of wine. Maybe it was Hotel Calimala's to-die-for rooftop view, or Vista Ostuni's pilgrimage-worthy Southern Italian menu, but my fears were hilariously unfounded.
Turns out—as I and my fellow Esquire editors learned in our recent travels—it's a damn good time to visit the boot. In the last three years alone, Italy has opened its doors to more new properties that we can even get to. This year, in 2026, there will more than 10 major openings we can’t wait to get to. In the meantime though, we’ve decided to roundup all the new properties that you should add to your summer hit list.
While I stayed in an AC-less motel as a kid, Italy is now packed with five-star properties that offer impeccable hospitality without forgetting its regional history, cuisine, and breathtaking surroundings. Below, you'll find ultra-luxe residences like Rome's Bvlgari Hotel, which—once you set foot in its marble-adorned spa—you'll never want to leave. Or, if you're looking for a coastal escape, Tuscany's Terre di Sacra offers private homes that will have you searching the requirements for Italian citizenship. Take your pick—below, these are the best new-ish hotels in Italy. —Brady Langman
Terre di Sacra
Terre di SacraCapalbio, TuscanyBook on Booking.comBook on Expedia.com
The wild coast of Maremma is best known for its Maremmana cattle and Il Pellicano, the famously elegant hotel captured by Slim Aarons. In Terre di Sacra, a twenty-five-hundred-acre nature preserve with seven miles of private wild beach and the first World Wildlife Federation refuge in Italy, there’s now a more Thoreauvian retreat, a place where one might see flamingos resting their wings on their journey from North Africa as the setting sun turns a medieval tower orange. Scattered across the property are twenty-nine private homes and forty glamping tents, but for me the twenty-four eco-lodges—think Amagansett, not East Hampton—are the perfect mix of rustic and luxe.—Joshua David Stein
Auberge Collection
Collegio Alla Querce, Auberge CollectionFlorenceBook on Booking.comBook on Hotels.com
Like every inch of Florence, the Collegio alla Querce breathes history. The hotel, sitting high atop the hills overlooking the city, was a nobleman’s palazzo in the sixteenth century. A few of the rooms have the original frescoes on the wall. A hundred years later it became a private school for the city’s elite, including members of Salvatore Ferragamo’s family. Bar Bertelli is the former headmaster’s office and named for a scientist who taught at the school. It’s in there that you order a Negroni and take it onto the veranda to see the sun dip below the cypress trees and bathe Florence in color—a view of which you never tire, to paraphrase W. Somerset Maugham in Up at the Villa, his novella set in the city. It’s quiet out here, and you feel miles away from the hordes of summer tourists invading the city. Yet the center of Florence is so close. The Collegio alla Querce is one of those hotels that feel so much like home you never want to leave. No surprise it’s part of the Auberge Collection, whose portfolio of luxury hotels and resorts are known for their intimate scale and strong sense of place. At the Collegio alla Querce, this is the work of ArchFlorence, a design firm that transformed the common areas into something both sumptuous and deeply inviting—and, above all, deeply Florentine. Your room might have a panoramic view of Florence or a sweeping vista of the Tuscan countryside. The scent of lemon trees wafts through your open window. The sun-drenched pool is said to be the longest in Florence, and next to it is a café that serves pizza fresh from the stone oven. Afterward, you can treat yourself to the ninety-minute massage at Aelia Spa and later dine at La Gamella, where seafood is the main event—a rarity in Tuscany. The tuna tartare is better than any you’ll find at a seaside resort. But it’s that veranda and that perfect cocktail and that red dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore bathed in sunlight that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. “On such a day,” Maugham wrote of early evening in Florence, “it was very good to be alive.”—Michael Sebastian
The Hoxton
The HoxtonFlorenceBook on Booking.comBook on Expedia.com
Just outside the Piazza della Libertà, nestled away on the cobblestone streets of northern Florence, the Hoxton strikes a seamless balance between modern and historic. In the corner of the lobby, the café serves Scandinavian pastries most days; the Alassio restaurant, under a fresco from 1611, offers traditional Florentine cuisine. Naturally, there’s also a wine bar, Enotecca Violetta. The place gets lively at night, but come down from the pastels of your postmodern suite at 9:00 a.m. and the private Renaissance-inspired courtyard, lush with greenery, is all yours.—Bryn Gelbart
W Hotel
W FlorenceFlorenceBook on Booking.comBook on Hotels.com
Florence, a beautiful city, does old well. New? Not so much. Contemporary Italian design can often lean cheeky or, worse, cheesy. But the new W Florence, housed in a restored rationalist building from the mid-sixties, is neither. Steps away from Piazza Santa Maria Novella, it’s a chic respite from the churches and chapels, not to mention the tourist hordes. A vast lobby mural of exotic beasts is an homage to the menagerie of the Medici family. The 119 rooms channel the Renaissance but make it new again. A neon arch above every bed nods to the Vassari corridor. Otherwise, the touches are light: marble accents, modernist chairs. The restaurant, Tratto, is a modern trattoria. (Try the swordfish spiedini with ’nduja mayo.) And in a city where the view of the Duomo is the coin of the realm, the Zefiro Rooftop is worth untold florins, plus inflation.—J.D.S.
courtesy hotel
Hotel CalimalaMilanBook on Hotels.comBook on Booking.com
When you’re on a Eurotrip with little time in lots of places, you need a reliable hotel that’s squarely in the middle of the action. That’s Hotel Calimala. It’s about a thirty-minute walk from Piazza del Duomo, but even closer is the handmade pasta of your dreams (PLIN Pastificio con Cucina), a pizza window that will blow your mind (Crosta Lab), and a cocktail joint that will destroy what’s left of it (Nottingham Forest). And when you tuck inside for the night, Hotel Calimala’s breathtaking rooftop is right upstairs, just waiting for you.—B.L.
Vista Ostuni
Vista OstuniPugliaBook on Hotels.comBook on Booking.com
We don’t make this kind of declaration lightly: This is the coastal Italian getaway you’ve been waiting for. The colossal property has the works: spa, rooftop pool, world-class staff, breakfast with endless pastries, architectural feats in every room. Then there’s the White City, a town that is so historic that Neanderthals lived there fifty thousand years ago. Lose yourself in all of it—mom-and-pop shops, sunny outdoor bars, tiny art museums, a sports dive if you look hard enough—but save room for dinner. You’re eating at Vista Ostuni’s Bianca Bistrot, whose southern-Italian menu is in beautiful lockstep with the local harvest. Then: a nightcap at Chiostro Bar. Then: sleep, wake up, and do it all again.—B.L.
Bvlgari
Bvlgari HotelRomeBook on Booking.comBook on TripAdvisor.com
Opulent doesn’t even come close. The marble bathrooms. The plush linens. The floral-patterned breakfast china. Proudly occupying a corner of the Piazza Augusto Imperatore, it’s just steps from everywhere you’ll want to be. The newest Bulgari hotel—the brand’s ninth, with 114 rooms and suites right in the luxury house’s hometown—doesn’t miss. It’s flush with modern amenities (like WhatsApp-supported butler service), but its design (think heavy stones and earthy tones) seeks to blend in with the icons of its surroundings. It works: Spend more than a few hours on-site and suddenly it’s amazing to think it wasn’t always here. What’s more, for all its gilded trappings, Bulgari Hotel Roma is remarkably comfortable. It’s nearly impossible to leave. But of course you must; Rome itself beckons. Then again, the Eternal City isn’t going anywhere.—Madison Vain
CHRIS DALTON PHOTOGRAPHY
Romeo RomaRomeBook on Booking.comBook on TripAdvisor.com
No matter how many times you’ve done Rome, you haven’t done it like this. One of Zaha Hadid’s final architectural projects, Romeo Roma is a fantastical fusion of tradition and modernity; the glass-bottom spa pool, suspended above an archaeological site, lets you swim among excavated ruins. When you’re ready to retreat to your room, the ebony and Carrara-marble interiors invite you back to the 21st century. (You can also opt to stay in one of the rooms with original frescoed walls if you’re feeling nostalgic for the 1500s.) With the exception of the stunning Il Ristorante Alain Ducasse Roma, everything in the hotel is exclusive to guests.—Trishna Rikhy
The Hoxton Rome
The Hoxton RomeRomeBook on Booking.comBook on TripAdvisor.com
The Eternal City is known for a great many things. Pasta alla carbonara. Singing in the street. Long lines at the Colosseum. There is no shortage of hotels—you’ll find something in any price range—but true quality budget stays are rare. Enter: the Hoxton. With two bars (both good!), one in the welcoming California-meets-Italy restaurant (it works!), and a location not far from the Spanish Steps, a stay at this price can’t be beat.—M.V.
Park Hyatt Milan
Park Hyatt MilanMilanBook on Booking.comBook on TripAdvisor.com
The Park Hyatt Milan is one of those hotels that bears regular repetition. Barely one hundred meters from the famous Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele and the Piazza Duomo, it is perfectly placed for a walkabout in this very walkable city. It has reemerged post-pandemic from an extensive refit, in which the somewhat harder modernist lines of its initial interior design (it opened in 2003) were replaced with a softer, more comfortable take on minimalism. Having stayed there a lot pre-Covid, I can say that one thing that hasn’t changed is the staff, who welcomed me at the door—by name—four years after I’d last visited. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, so I always regard this as either an amazing feat of memory or just damn good prep. Either way, for me, it signals a great hotel far better than could a reliable club sandwich.—Kevin Sintumuang
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