A morning dispatch, written from a wrought-iron chair on the breakfast terrace, with the bell from one of the village churches doing its eight o’clock work in the middle distance.
Asolo is the slow Veneto. It is sixty-five kilometres from Venice, but the spiritual distance is greater. The town climbs a hill, the hill looks at the foothills of the Dolomites, and the foothills, on a clear morning, look back. I had not been here in four years. Villa Cipriani had not changed in any way I could see, which is a compliment, not a complaint.
The walk up
The property sits on the upper slope of the medieval village. From the gates of the historic centre it is a steep eight-minute walk, longer if you stop, which you will. The hotel can collect you in a small van from the lower car park if you ask; I walked, because the morning was cool and because the climb is part of the architecture of the place.
You arrive at a stone facade with a heavy door and a small reception that is doing the same thing it has been doing since 1962, when Giuseppe Cipriani rebuilt the property — then the Hotel Belvedere — at the request of the English Earl who owned it. The rebuild is the founding gesture of the modern hotel. It is now part of the Belmond collection. The bones of the Cipriani-era plan are visible everywhere if you look: the relationship of the public rooms to the garden, the orientation of the terrace toward the southern light, the modesty of the main door.
The room
I was in a Casa Giardino room, which is the addition rather than the historic villa. The Casa rooms are quieter and have the better garden orientation. Mine looked over the lemon pots and across to the lower retaining wall, and beyond the wall to the layered hills running north toward Bassano del Grappa.
The room itself is more restrained than the Cipriani-Venice grandness — fewer Fortuny prints, simpler millwork, a bed that is firmer than the Belmond average. The bathroom has been refreshed since my last visit. The towel weight is correct. The water pressure is correct. These things sound small. They are not.
Breakfast on the terrace
Breakfast service starts at 07:30 in the season I was there. I went down at 07:45 and had the terrace mostly to myself for twenty minutes. The choreography is unhurried.
The coffee is the right coffee — pulled from a manual machine, not a button — and the cornetti are made in-house, which I confirmed by asking. The pastry chef has been with the property for nine years. The Veneto pastry idiom is gentler than the Roman; the cornetti are softer, less crisp, less sweet. There is a tray of regional honeys that includes a chestnut honey from the foothills that I had not had before and went back for.
The savoury side is where Italian hotel breakfasts usually fall apart. Here it does not. The salumi tray is a small one but the producers are named on a card and one of them is a butcher in Asolo proper. The cheese tray is regional. Eggs are cooked to order. I had eggs in a small copper pan with a piece of buttered toasted bread, and that was the whole breakfast.
The garden walk
After breakfast I walked the garden. The property’s grounds are not vast, but they are well-organised. There is a long path that runs east toward the lower retaining wall, then doubles back through a small ornamental section, and ends near the pool. The pool was empty in April — it opens in May — and the absence of the pool gives the garden a calmer shape. I am of the view that an Italian hill-town hotel is at its best in spring before the pool opens, and Villa Cipriani in mid-April was the argument.
The garden has a long view that the photographs do not capture, because the photographs are usually shot from the terrace and the long view is from the lower wall looking back. From the lower wall the villa sits at the upper-right of the frame, the garden falls away to the left, and the Dolomite foothills sit behind. It is not a dramatic view. It is the right view.
Into the village
Eleanor Duse is buried in Asolo, at the small cemetery of Sant’Anna. Robert Browning kept a house here. The town’s literary biography is dense and slightly melancholy, and you can feel it in the slope of the main street. I walked down at 10:30, did the loop of the piazza, bought a bag of taralli at the bakery, and was back at the villa for a lunch I did not eat because I was still full from breakfast.
The walk down took eight minutes. The walk back up took sixteen. I have not lost weight since I was last here.
What the hotel is for
This is the part of the dispatch that I want to be direct about. Villa Cipriani is not a hotel for a one-night Venice add-on. It does not work that way. You will drive an hour from Marco Polo, you will check in, you will eat dinner, you will sleep, and you will leave before you have understood what the place is for.
What the place is for is two or three nights of nothing in particular. You walk down to the village. You walk back up. You sit on the terrace. You order a Bellini in the afternoon and pretend you have not realised that the Bellini is a Cipriani-Venice cocktail that has made its way to Cipriani-Asolo by family fiat. You eat dinner in the small dining room. You sleep in a room that does not have a television visible from the bed.
That is the property. That is what it has been since Giuseppe Cipriani rebuilt it in 1962. The Belmond stewardship has not improved it, because there was nothing to improve, and has not damaged it, which is the harder achievement.
A note on the village’s restaurants
The village has two restaurants I would put on a serious list and three more that are pleasant if you are already in town. The hotel’s own dining room is the easier choice in the evening and the food has been more consistent on this visit than on my last one. Pasta course is the strong course. Skip the dessert and walk down to the gelateria in the piazza — it closes at 22:00 in the season I was there.
A small administrative note
If you are arriving by train, Bassano del Grappa is the closer station and the taxi up to Asolo is about twenty-five minutes. From Venice Santa Lucia the trip is longer than it looks on the map; the regional train is the right train. Do not attempt to drive into the historic centre. The ZTL signage is enforced and the fines arrive in the post months later.
I leave tomorrow morning. The terrace will still be quiet, the cornetti will still be soft, the bell will still ring at eight.
Standing Questions
- How many rooms does Villa Cipriani have?
- Twenty-eight keys total, divided between the historic main villa and the Casa Giardino addition. The Casa Giardino rooms are quieter and have the better garden orientation.
- What is the history of the property?
- In 1962 the Earl who owned the property asked Giuseppe Cipriani to rebuild and manage what had been the Hotel Belvedere. Cipriani reopened it as Hotel Villa Cipriani. It is now part of the Belmond collection.
- Is it walkable to Asolo's centre?
- Yes, but the walk down is significantly easier than the walk up. Allow eight to ten minutes down to the piazza and a slower fifteen back up. The hotel runs a shuttle on request.
- Should I drive in?
- Asolo's historic centre is a restricted traffic zone. The hotel has parking; do not attempt to drive into the piazza. The closest airports are Venice Marco Polo (about an hour) and Treviso (forty minutes).
