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SERIEN IKONEN BEWOHNEN • LIVING IN ICONS

U pon entering the hotel, we already had the flight to Italy, an architectural tour
in Naples, the transfer to Sorrento and an adventurous Vespa ride along the
Amalfi Coast behind us. Exhausted, we dragged our suitcases through the dense, ex-
tensive park and arrived at the hotel entrance. Our eyes wandered across a spacious
hall, past blue-white tiles with various formats and patterns, over blue-covered
upholstered furniture and outside again through the glazing to the glittering sea – an
overwhelming blue! We had arrived at Parco dei Principi, the park of the princes, a
journey back to the 1960s!

From the summer residence of the czar to the design hotel

The last three centuries have left the traces of the respective owners in the grounds
measuring 27,000 square metres. In 1959, the Neapolitan entrepreneur and engineer
Roberto Fernandes recognized the potential of the property 70 metres above the sea.
He deliberately wanted to make the extraordinary topography and the surrounding
park with the remaining architectural trouvailles accessible to a wider public. It was
fortunate that he put the old master of Italian modernist architecture, Gio Ponti, in
charge of the demanding task to bring the existing unfinished building into the pre-
sent as a modern new hotel building. Ponti is one of the few architects in Italy who
became internationally famous by designing small everyday objects as well as major
building-construction projects. After a construction period of only two years, the new
hotel was inaugurated in 1962. Ponti’s design maxim was “Blue and white – as far as
Gäste gelangen durch den Park zum Eingang an der Rückfassade. • Through the park: entrance at the rear façade. the eye can see”. The clear and unspectacular building with five full storeys shines
in white, the façade – towards the sea as well as the park – is structured by the hotel-
room balconies with blue blinds accentuating the recesses. Ponti added the colour
Blick vom Balkon auf den sichelförmigen, privaten Bade-Pier • View from balcony: sickle-shaped, private pier blue in all its variants to the hotel interior as well: The walls in the lobby and the
bar are covered in blue-white ceramic pebbles whereas, in the restaurant, the walls
are designed with majolica tiles in different shades of blue and white. “Tile carpets”
with a variety of ornaments and installation patterns decorate the floors in all the
public areas. For the about 100 hotel rooms, Ponti had set himself the goal of desi-
gning a specific tiled floor for each one. His resulting tile designs are today newly
edited by Francesco de Maio. The guests also find the colour blue in the furnishing
often designed by Ponti himself or colleagues he was friends with. His guiding prin-
ciple: The furnishing is not to distract from the magnificent view of the sea but em-
phasize it. That this total artwork of the Italian design of the 1960s is still preserved
today with this quality and consistency is owed to the Neapolitan architect Fabrizio
Mautone and the refurbishing he oversaw from 1999 to 2004. There are now 96 hotel
rooms, two restaurants, a seawater swimming pool, three bars, a fitness zone and
two conference rooms. For the 50th anniversary in 2012, Fabrizio Mautone again
sprang into action: On the ground floor, he installed a didactic exhibition to give the
first design hotel the added value of a hotel museum. Naturally integrated into the
public areas, display boards, pieces of furniture and design drawings also inform
those guests about the special features of the place who had only expected five-star
comfort and did not know that the Hotel Parco dei Principi is a unique design icon.

Entwurfszeichnung von Gio Ponti für die Fassade zum Meer • Gio Ponti drawing for the façade towards the sea Fotomontage: oben vor 1959, unten danach – links Villa Gortschakow • Before 1959, after, left: Villa Gortschakow

046 • AIT 10.2020