Portofino, home to the stars and now a new drama series
Hotel Portofino, Thursday 27 January, Britbox
Nick Redman - 26 January 2022
The photograph below says it all: café chairs and an awning or two. A docked boat, a church up on the headland, and a handsome pipe-smoker wandering hand in hand with a beauty in a straw hat. Look familiar? Of course it does. It’s Elizabeth Taylor in 1959, papped honeymooning with her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher. To know what put Portofino on the glamour map, look to the stars…
Celebrities are everywhere in the Italian resort – in picture frames on restaurant walls (Maria Callas, 1962) and routinely in the flesh (Cher, 2021). Rex Harrison had a villa here. Ditto Dolce and Gabbana. And now, it seems, Natascha McElhone and her cast-mates have descended for Hotel Portofino, BritBox’s glamorous new period drama.
The real beauty of the place is that, by day, everybody can enjoy a slice: the cruise ships deposit crowds on the cobbles, and the buses rumble in from Santa Margherita Ligure, along the coast. But by dusk, as you sip a martini by the water’s edge at the Jolly bar, tiny Portofino is again a place lost in time.
There’s something about the village that places it for ever in the past. It’s the old-jade shade of the sea around this corner of northern Italy, the Renaissance light and the brushstrokes of cypress and umbrella pine against the sunset. It’s tailor-made (Taylor-made?) for drama, which explains the decision to set Hotel Portofino here: the show’s elegant and patrician characters can’t entirely escape the shadow of corrupt politicians, a caddish art thief and the rise of Mussolini. Portofino, home to the stars and now a new drama series, may be small, but has beauty by the mile Grace and glamour.
Admittedly, much of the shooting for the series – in which we see both the delights and travails of McElhone and her slightly eccentric British family opening the hotel – took place in Opatija, the elegant Croatian resort. But it shares with Portofino some glamorous credentials, as a relaxation station for the ill and wealthy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Long before the jet-set age, the aristocracy – English and German – arrived in Portofino, seeking sun and beauty. The Fourth Earl of Carnarvon built a holiday home, Villa Altachiara. In 1867, the English consul to Genoa, Montague Yeats Brown, bought the fortress that stands on the headland, planting the two pines that still stand, giving the harbour its distinctive view. And the loveliest hotel in the village, Hotel Splendido, dating from 1901, owes its origins to one Baron Baratta, who took on the medieval monastery as a summer residence.
Whether you’re Rod Stewart or Beyoncé, the weekend starts here. And possibly ends here, since diminutive Portofino demands refreshingly little of its idle café-going admirers (unless you count window-shopping its designer boutiques). Sightseeing amounts to a couple of churches: San Martino, set slightly back from the piazzetta, merits a look for the candy-stripe Lombardy-Romanesque façade alone, although the frescoed interior is remarkable. And San Giorgio, high on the promontory, stakes its claim on relics of Saint George – patron saint of the village – brought back by mariners from the Crusades. Thereafter you can head on up, round to the lonely lighthouse on the headland (which, this being Portofino, does cocktails).
If you want to explore more, there’s plenty of beauty beyond. Among Richard Burton’s diarised perfect life moments was contemplating the view – through binoculars – of the road to neighbouring Santa Margherita Ligure. With ferry and bus links, you don’t need a celebrity’s bank balance to visit… and visit you must, for an idyllic afternoon’s wander. It’s a superbly photogenic resort town of palm trees, pale fin-de-siècle hotels like wedding cakes, and ice-cream parlours out of the Dolce Vita days. So is Rapallo, where you disembark next.
Board the cable car for the hilltop Sanctuary of Our Lady of Montallegro, with its stark marble frontage. Up here, only-in-Italy snapshots don’t get much nicer than a thirst-slaking birra at hotel restaurant Il Pellegrino, looking back across the yacht-flecked Gulf of Tigullio to distant Portofino, in late golden light. Ultimately, nowhere retains the bling-free glamour of the bygone Italian Riviera quite like bijou San Fruttuoso, a short ferry ride north from Portofino (if you can’t convince the Splendido to take you, Onassis-style, in its speedboat). Hidden in an inlet, it’s a thumbnail cove of pebbles only accessible by sea, or on foot over the high, pine- and oak-forested terrain around it.
Like a ship in a bottle, a huge domed Benedictine Abbey forms a backdrop to the scene: clusters of sunbathers on loungers, a snack-shack or two doing mussels, and swoony Negroni cocktails in thick tumblers. Book a night at Da Giovanni, a simple restaurant-with-rooms. Hotel Portofino’s aristocratic set would not approve, yet after the last ferry leaves and the sky turns mauve, pesto lasagne arrives with a jug of cold white – and in the solitude of the terrace, you’ll feel like a star from another age.
The photograph below says it all: café chairs and an awning or two. A docked boat, a church up on the headland, and a handsome pipe-smoker wandering hand in hand with a beauty in a straw hat. Look familiar? Of course it does. It’s Elizabeth Taylor in 1959, papped honeymooning with her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher. To know what put Portofino on the glamour map, look to the stars…
Celebrities are everywhere in the Italian resort – in picture frames on restaurant walls (Maria Callas, 1962) and routinely in the flesh (Cher, 2021). Rex Harrison had a villa here. Ditto Dolce and Gabbana. And now, it seems, Natascha McElhone and her cast-mates have descended for Hotel Portofino, BritBox’s glamorous new period drama.
The real beauty of the place is that, by day, everybody can enjoy a slice: the cruise ships deposit crowds on the cobbles, and the buses rumble in from Santa Margherita Ligure, along the coast. But by dusk, as you sip a martini by the water’s edge at the Jolly bar, tiny Portofino is again a place lost in time.
There’s something about the village that places it for ever in the past. It’s the old-jade shade of the sea around this corner of northern Italy, the Renaissance light and the brushstrokes of cypress and umbrella pine against the sunset. It’s tailor-made (Taylor-made?) for drama, which explains the decision to set Hotel Portofino here: the show’s elegant and patrician characters can’t entirely escape the shadow of corrupt politicians, a caddish art thief and the rise of Mussolini. Portofino, home to the stars and now a new drama series, may be small, but has beauty by the mile Grace and glamour.
Admittedly, much of the shooting for the series – in which we see both the delights and travails of McElhone and her slightly eccentric British family opening the hotel – took place in Opatija, the elegant Croatian resort. But it shares with Portofino some glamorous credentials, as a relaxation station for the ill and wealthy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Long before the jet-set age, the aristocracy – English and German – arrived in Portofino, seeking sun and beauty. The Fourth Earl of Carnarvon built a holiday home, Villa Altachiara. In 1867, the English consul to Genoa, Montague Yeats Brown, bought the fortress that stands on the headland, planting the two pines that still stand, giving the harbour its distinctive view. And the loveliest hotel in the village, Hotel Splendido, dating from 1901, owes its origins to one Baron Baratta, who took on the medieval monastery as a summer residence.
Whether you’re Rod Stewart or Beyoncé, the weekend starts here. And possibly ends here, since diminutive Portofino demands refreshingly little of its idle café-going admirers (unless you count window-shopping its designer boutiques). Sightseeing amounts to a couple of churches: San Martino, set slightly back from the piazzetta, merits a look for the candy-stripe Lombardy-Romanesque façade alone, although the frescoed interior is remarkable. And San Giorgio, high on the promontory, stakes its claim on relics of Saint George – patron saint of the village – brought back by mariners from the Crusades. Thereafter you can head on up, round to the lonely lighthouse on the headland (which, this being Portofino, does cocktails).
If you want to explore more, there’s plenty of beauty beyond. Among Richard Burton’s diarised perfect life moments was contemplating the view – through binoculars – of the road to neighbouring Santa Margherita Ligure. With ferry and bus links, you don’t need a celebrity’s bank balance to visit… and visit you must, for an idyllic afternoon’s wander. It’s a superbly photogenic resort town of palm trees, pale fin-de-siècle hotels like wedding cakes, and ice-cream parlours out of the Dolce Vita days. So is Rapallo, where you disembark next.
Board the cable car for the hilltop Sanctuary of Our Lady of Montallegro, with its stark marble frontage. Up here, only-in-Italy snapshots don’t get much nicer than a thirst-slaking birra at hotel restaurant Il Pellegrino, looking back across the yacht-flecked Gulf of Tigullio to distant Portofino, in late golden light. Ultimately, nowhere retains the bling-free glamour of the bygone Italian Riviera quite like bijou San Fruttuoso, a short ferry ride north from Portofino (if you can’t convince the Splendido to take you, Onassis-style, in its speedboat). Hidden in an inlet, it’s a thumbnail cove of pebbles only accessible by sea, or on foot over the high, pine- and oak-forested terrain around it.
Like a ship in a bottle, a huge domed Benedictine Abbey forms a backdrop to the scene: clusters of sunbathers on loungers, a snack-shack or two doing mussels, and swoony Negroni cocktails in thick tumblers. Book a night at Da Giovanni, a simple restaurant-with-rooms. Hotel Portofino’s aristocratic set would not approve, yet after the last ferry leaves and the sky turns mauve, pesto lasagne arrives with a jug of cold white – and in the solitude of the terrace, you’ll feel like a star from another age.
Hotel Portofino Thursday 27 January BritBox