The Westin Excelsior Florence

The Hotel

The site of the Westin Excelsior has been continuously inhabited since the thirteenth century, when the religious order of the Umiliati settled here and began constructing the church and the surrounding borgo around Piazza Ognissanti from 1251. The building belonged to the noble Boccaccio family in 1427, then to the Gondi family from 1607. In 1833 the property was purchased by Carolina Bonaparte — sister of Napoleon and Queen of Naples through her marriage to Joachim Murat — who commissioned the engineer Giuseppe Martelli to rebuild the structure as her Florentine residence. After her death the property changed hands repeatedly. In 1912 Gerardo Kraft consolidated two adjoining hotels (the Hotel La Ville and the Hôtel Italie) into a single property, closed both for renovation in 1925, and reopened the consolidated 170-room Excelsior Italie in 1927.

The hotel today operates as part of Marriott's Luxury Collection brand and is currently in transition to The Excelsior, A Luxury Collection Hotel, Florence — the Westin branding being phased out in favour of the more decorated Luxury Collection identity. The 171 rooms (including 23 suites) retain the period-style hand-carved gold-leaf plaques, custom-designed furniture, original paintings, frescoes, and crystal chandeliers that have characterised the property for nearly a century. The named suites — the Presidential, the Heritage, the Royal — occupy the top-floor corner positions with Arno views; the Tuscan Suite includes a private terrace with a view across the river to the Boboli Gardens. Standard categories run reasonably generous (around 30–35 square metres) for a building of this period, and bathrooms have been comprehensively updated through Marriott investment.

SE-STO on Arno is the rooftop restaurant on the sixth (sesto) floor — the only major-hotel rooftop in central Florence with a 360-degree panorama that includes the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Boboli Gardens, and the Arno simultaneously. The kitchen runs a contemporary Tuscan menu under chef-direction; the sunset table is the most reliably booked working dinner reservation in the city for non-residents. Il Bambù is the ground-floor restaurant for breakfast and the working lunch. The Donatello Bar in the lobby holds the period bones of the original 1927 hotel — wood panelling, the original Murano chandelier, and the long marble counter — and is the most architecturally serious hotel bar in Florence.

Service runs in the classical European-grand-hotel mode rather than the highly personalised Lifestyle Ambassador model the Lungarno Collection has popularised. The position is the second proposition: Piazza Ognissanti directly on the Arno, opposite the Hotel St. Regis (its historic sister, since the two share Piazza Ognissanti in the way the Gritti Palace and the Bauer share Campo San Moisè in Venice), and within ten minutes' walk of the Duomo, the Uffizi, Santa Maria Novella station, and the Pitti Palace across the Ponte Santa Trinita. For the Florence booking that wants the period grande dame, the river-facing room, and the SE-STO sunset dinner — and is willing to trade the highly personalised contemporary boutique service for the classical hotel programme — the Westin Excelsior is the answer at meaningfully lower money than the Four Seasons.

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