The setting for the current season of The White Lotus is the Palace of the Four Seasons of San Domenico in Sicily. Maddy Mussen sets out on an adventure to observe its olfactory landscape, cursed statues and outstanding guest list.
The gardens of Palazzo San Domenico are scented with another 40 lemon trees
I’m mendacity through the pool of a five-star hotel in Sicily, the November sun is still 10 times warmer than London for months, drinking a cocktail made of je ne sais quoi, because I just had it and I did it. Don’t bother asking. Etna rises above me, judging: who does this woman think she is?A White Lotus character?
In fact, that’s precisely who I am. Because I went to the palace of San Domenico, the royal house from the time of the season of The White Lotus, and I live as close as possible to the HBO budget.
Although the hotel is the show’s namesake, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of The White Lotus is rarely the place where it takes place. Sydney Sweeney Generation Z snipers, or huh. . . Theo James’ appendix.
The tourist-themed HBO drama series achieved cult play in a single season last year, following holiday reports from the super-rich and fictional megatitles, with the likes of Connie Britton and Murray Bartlett bringing them to life (and then, in some cases, death).
Feeling the audience’s thirst for more and taking advantage of its smart audience length, with an average of 9. 3 million viewership consistent with the episode across all platforms in the U. S. alone. In the U. S. , HBO temporarily set out to do a season of moments, which began airing last week.
This time, we’re greeted by a new generation of extraordinarily wealthy people: in addition to Coolidge’s Emmy-winning role as Tanya McQuoid, who reprises, and her husband Greg, each and every face is new. So far, we’ve had two episodes to adapt to our new children’s package as they adapt to The White Lotus in Taormina, Sicily.
So I thought about making some changes myself. A weekend in the real-life counterpart of The White Lotus, the San Domenico Palace, a Four Seasons hotel built around a fourteenth-century convent, how close the series is to reality.
Theo James sat on the terrace of Palazzo San Domenico, also known as The White Lotus
The San Domenico Palace has been a hotel for 126 years and a Four Seasons for one, and opened in its current form on July 1 last year. The windows of its rooms the extensive gardens of the hotel, then the infinity pool of 2 meters, then the Ionic Sea. It smells, and in fact I do, incredibly good. And not only because of the 40 types of lemon trees that populate the gardens – we clarify at reception and there is someone who devoutly sprinkles the aisles with a Four Seasons zone aroma. You can’t buy it, believe me I tried.
In the other aspect of the building, the front to San Domenico are just the main streets of Taormina, and it turns out that the city was already completely ready for a crowd of pseudo-millionaires to come down, flanked by film crews. After all, they get the genuine each and every summer.
The infinity pool at the Palace of San Domenico, Four Seasons Taormina
And more: Donald Trump and other heads of state were invited to San Domenico at the G7 summit in 2017, allegedly obstructing the city’s small streets with their giant convoys. Beyond the White Potus, Francis Ford Coppola visited the hotel at this year’s Taormina Film Festival, and Sharon Stone spent a few nights watching Dolce’s High Fashion show.
Defining San Domenico as the backdrop to the super-rich’ holiday was no exaggeration. Taormina is built for the wealthy, with fewer department stores for tourists and more boutiques from Dior, Rolex, Benetton and Gucci. Meghann Fahy’s character, Daphne, can almost be heard commenting on Dior’s jewelry to her beloved husband as she walks through the cobblestone streets of the city.
The characters of the White Lotus drink it on a boat in the bays of Taormina
The hotel will charge you a minimum of £984 per night for this time of year, and this figure will rise to thousands next summer. The numbers may seem hard to justify, but the Four Seasons is doing everything it can to do so. During our stay in a stunning ocean view room, we were treated to an excellent dinner, new buffet breakfasts, and local fish caught that day. And everything had to go beyond the tastes of a typical hotel: for example, the prosciutto served at breakfast not just a provision on a plate, but cut for you separately through a waiter engaged with a meat cutter.
The hotel has 4 kitchens, 3 for its 3 respective dining rooms: Principe Cerami, its gourmet dining room run by award-winning chef Massimo Mantarro, who is lately a Michelin star, Bar and Chiostro for lighter meals, and Anciovi, the restaurant of the sea. View pool place to eat open only in high season. Oh, and the fourth kitchen is for banquets, obviously.
Principe Cerami, the place to eat in San Domenico
One of the first White Lotus treats you notice as you walk through San Domenico is the presence of those statues with ornamental and menacing heads (the kind Jennifer Coolidge imagines when she has sex with her husband), which mark almost each and every place. The statues depict an old forbidden love affair between local women: in 1100, a Sicilian woman fell in love with an Arab fighter only to realize he had a woman at home, so she decapitated him and used his head as a pot on her bright garden balcony, as she still enjoyed watching him (alone). There are no spoilers for the end of White Lotus episode 2, but there are some parallels that appear.
One of the historical incorporeal heads inside a bath of the Palace of San Domenico
It’s transparent from the entire Taormina experience, not just the hotel, which White Lotus author Mike White spent a lot of time in the city, shaping its history in its surroundings. The characters stop at all the main places of interest, just like us. In the only episode two, Di Grasso’s scale in the ancient Greek amphitheater, cameras run along the famous Isalo Bella beach, and Aubrey Plaza’s husband, Ethan, played by Will Sharpe, runs to the crucifix that sits atop the city’s main hill (Via Crucis). Like the turning point of season one in Maui, White is tasked with organizing the story around its location, rather than throwing a bunch of characters and their arcs into a grand hotel and hoping for the best.
The image of the hotel after the Greek amphitheater, one of the attractions of Taormina
That said, the hotel is very very nice. The rest of San Domenico includes a hall for its ancient art, a ballroom, lawns, and its giant cloister, a central courtyard that serves as an extended bar seat. At night, the cloister is fully illuminated by candlelight and while strong and beautifully mixed alcoholic beverages are served in the near darkness, it almost feels like a bit of cloak and dagger: anything can happen in this lighting. Perhaps this area is where Mike White learned San Domenico would be best for The White Lotus, given their current rate of at least one homicide consistent with the season.
But let’s be clear, the hotel doesn’t feel as murderous or libertine as The White Lotus needs you to think: San Domenico makes a concerted effort to make visitors feel comfortable around every corner, and while cash flows, alcohol, and bad habit are ‘t.
The giant cloister shown in scenes from HBO’s The White Lotus
You are too busy taking care of yourself. If you swim in the pool, you will be greeted with a loose alcohol-free cocktail after swimming, placed near your tanning bed without you knowing. If you leave an e-book on your bedside table, the maintenance branch will place an electronic marker on the dust cover.
When a weather alert point thunderstorm occurred one night, it all ended in the morning, contrary to what the forecast predicted, and it almost looked like the janitor had gone up and had a word of company with the clouds. Sparkling water, even if we don’t have it at home, because it has presented itself to me a lot in the last 3 days.
Strolling through the hotel grounds is like receiving a sweet concert from Bonobo thanks to the hotel’s constant atmosphere and speakers.
What’s more, the most interesting, treated with what turns out to be endless atmospheric scenery as you walk around the hotel: low-fidelity beats that sound softly through carefully placed speakers wherever you pass and, of course, the ever-present lingering aroma, thank you. to the spritzer of the secret area of San Domenico.
San Domenico, in short, surely does not provide you with any excuse not to have a good time. Which only proves the right of White Lotus guests, who seem to be in a state of perpetual unhappiness, no matter how well cared for they are, how charming the prospect, or how gourmet their food is. In the end, if it’s not too rich for your blood, the Palace of San Domenico is to die for. And, unlike the cast of White Lotus, it will most likely return in one piece.