I have stayed at the Splendido three times — in 2014 (before the most recent ownership refresh), in October 2022 (the last week of the season before the 18-month renovation closed the property), and most recently for four nights in May 2026, a year after the post-renovation reopening. The May stay forms the basis of this review.
The arrival
The arrival at the Splendido is the climb. You leave the SS1 at Santa Margherita, follow the coastal road south for 12 minutes, pass Portofino village without stopping, and continue up the headland on a single-lane road that switchbacks four times before delivering you, with no warning, to a small courtyard at the property’s main entrance. The driver — assuming you have arranged the hotel’s car from Genoa airport (a 65-minute transfer) — pulls in, the porters take the bags, and you are inside before the engine has cooled.
The lobby of the Splendido is small, polished, and faintly ecclesiastical — the 16th-century Benedictine monastery’s bones are visible in the stone-arched ceiling and the original tile work in the courtyard fountain. The check-in is handled seated, with a small glass of the property’s house Prosecco from a producer in Friuli and the first of a series of cold towels the hotel deploys at every guest interaction in May. The director who handled my check-in, a man named Marco who has been with Belmond for 11 years, walked me to the room rather than handing me a key.
The setting is what the rate buys. The Splendido sits on a 16th-century monastery plot at the northern end of the Portofino headland, 80 metres above the village and the bay, with three sea exposures (south to the open Mediterranean, west to Portofino itself, north along the Tigullio coast). The view from the terrace bar — across the village’s harbour, with the Castello Brown above and the open sea beyond — is the postcard view that has been on the cover of every Italian Riviera guidebook for sixty years. I have not yet found a competing view on the coast.
Setting score: 4.9. The half-point deduction is the road, which during the August peak runs single-lane with car-park overflow that the hotel manages but cannot eliminate.
The suite
I took a Junior Suite Sea View (room 311), 52 square metres, on the third floor of the main building, with a 14-square-metre balcony facing the harbour. The room is post-renovation (April 2025 reopening) and reflects the design direction of the 2023-2025 refurbishment, which was overseen by Davide Vercelli and a Belmond in-house design team.
Material specifics:
- The bed is dressed in white Pratesi linen, made up with a feather topper that I asked the housekeeper to keep (the room sat at 19 degrees overnight, which is the temperature at which the topper actually performs).
- The floor is a new white-oak parquet, replacing the previous travertine in the 2024 refurbishment — a decision I am ambivalent about. The travertine was original to the 1980s renovation and had a Mediterranean honesty the parquet lacks; the parquet is warmer underfoot but more generic.
- The bathroom is in Calacatta marble, with a freestanding tub and a separate rain shower. Amenities are Acqua di Parma in the standard 75ml glass, refilled in pump bottles.
- The minibar is reasonable. A demi of Ligurian Vermentino from Massa di Pignone, two small bottles of San Pellegrino, a tin of Splendido-branded focaccia chips made by a bakery in Recco, and a carafe of still water refilled twice daily.
- The hotel has installed a small Marshall speaker in each suite — a 2025 addition — that connects to Bluetooth without complication. The decision is a small one but is correct: the previous in-room audio was a wall-mounted iPad-with-Sonos that was already obsolete in 2022.
What the suite did not give me, which would lift it from a 4.4 to a 4.6, is the privacy of the balcony — the balconies at this category are stacked vertically, three high, and conversation carries between them. The Splendido’s older Junior Suites (the so-called “monastery rooms” on the second floor) have walled rather than balustraded terraces and run quieter; I would request one of those over the modernised third-floor stock.
Suites score: 4.4. The deductions are the balcony privacy, a desk surface that is too shallow for laptop work, and the post-renovation parquet which feels like a step away from the Riviera vernacular.
The service
Service at the Splendido is the dimension on which the Belmond operating culture is most visible. The senior team is long-tenured; the F&B operation runs at the high end of Italian hotel standards; the small frictions of the property’s hilltop position are managed by a logistics team whose work is invisible until you start to notice it.
Two moments from the May stay.
On the second afternoon, my wife mentioned to the pool concierge that she had left her sun hat at La Gritta — the cocktail bar on the village square — during a pre-lunch aperitivo. The concierge, a young woman whose name I did not catch but who I would credit if I had, walked down to the village, retrieved the hat, and delivered it to the cabana before the next round of drinks arrived. No charge appeared on the folio.
On the third morning, I asked the breakfast captain — Salvatore, with the property since 2009 — whether it was possible to take a 30-minute walk through the kitchen garden with the head gardener. The garden walk was arranged for 11.30 a.m. the same day; the head gardener (a man named Giovanni who has been at the property for 23 years and propagates his own basil from cuttings) walked me through the herb beds, the small artichoke crop, and the lemon trellis along the pool wall. The exchange took 45 minutes and was unprompted by any concierge prompting on my part.
The service depth is the strongest argument for the Splendido over the newer Ligurian competitors. The team understands the hilltop’s logistical complexity — the shuttle to the village, the boat dock at the Mare, the kitchen’s supply lines from Santa Margherita’s morning market — and runs the operation with the calm that comes from generational tenure.
Service score: 4.7. The half-point deduction is the front-desk wait on the 17 May check-in afternoon, which ran 14 minutes longer than the published target during a peak arrival window.
The table
The Splendido has two principal dining rooms. La Terrazza, on the main terrace at the front of the hotel, runs all-day dining with the headline view. The Restaurant Splendido, the formal dining room on the ground floor of the main building, holds dinner only — a more serious operation under executive chef Corrado Corti, who took the role in 2022 having spent twelve years at Da Vittorio in Bergamo.
I took dinner at the Restaurant Splendido on the second night and lunch on the terrace on three of the four days.
The Restaurant Splendido under Corti is the kind of confident regional cooking that the post-renovation Splendido needed and which the Belmond group has invested in. The May menu:
- A starter of red prawns from Santa Margherita’s morning catch, raw, dressed with the property’s own olive oil from a Ligurian grove the hotel has held under contract since 2008.
- A pasta of trofie with the canonical Ligurian pesto (Genovese basil grown on the property, Sardinian pecorino, Cuneo pine nuts) — a small portion, correctly executed, served at the right temperature.
- A whole branzino baked in salt crust, brought to the table for filleting, dressed with a salmoriglio from Sicily.
- A sgroppino di limone (the Splendido’s house pre-dessert — lemon sorbet, Prosecco, vodka) served in a frozen glass.
- A small pasticceria course of three Ligurian biscuits.
The wine list runs 720 references with strong depth at the Ligurian end (the Bisson verticals from the 2010s are unusual to see outside of Italy) and credible Tuscany and Piedmont. Sommelier Andrea Foschini — in post since 2020 — knows the list and is not pushed by the financial side of the business toward the higher-margin verticals.
La Terrazza at lunch is the better of the two operations for what most guests want at the Splendido: a long lunch on the terrace, with the view, with a Vermentino and a plate of seafood. The May lunches I took ran simply — a salad of pomodorini and burrata, a pasta with frutti di mare, an espresso. The lunch operation supports 60 covers across the terrace and on a sunny May day runs them all simultaneously without dropping a plate.
Table score: 4.6. The deduction is the breakfast pastry programme, which during the May visit was visibly weaker than I remembered from 2022 — the croissants are now baked in Genoa and delivered, where previously they were finished on site.
The detail
The detail score at the Splendido accumulates in the operational decisions that distinguish a long-established hilltop hotel from the newer Riviera competitors.
From the May stay:
- The saltwater pool, 17 metres long, set into the western edge of the terrace, faces directly into the bay and is filtered every 50 minutes. The pool boys keep a paper sun-lounger reservation log, identical in form to Hotel du Cap’s; first come, no upsell, no premium loungers.
- The shuttle to the village runs every 15 minutes during operating hours (8 a.m. to midnight) in a four-vehicle fleet of electric Piaggio Porters — quiet, efficient, no charge. The drivers know the village vendors and will hold a lemon-tree delivery, a wine pickup from La Gritta, or a dry-cleaning collection without comment.
- The hotel’s small spa, the Splendido Wellness, has been refreshed under the 2024-2025 renovation. The hammam is in Carrara marble; the treatment list runs to 22 items; the spa manager pointed me to a 60-minute deep-tissue rather than the 90-minute option “because the climb back up the steps will do half the work.”
- Turndown delivers a small jar of Ligurian honey from a Recco apiarist and a printed note with the next day’s tide and shuttle times. The tide note is unusual for a hilltop hotel and reflects the operational integration with the Splendido Mare downstairs.
- The hotel’s small fleet of cars for transfers — three Mercedes V-Class vehicles and a Bentley Mulsanne held for special occasions — is run by a head driver named Paolo who knows every road on the Tigullio coast and which of the Cinque Terre villages will be most navigable on any given day.
Detail score: 4.4. The deductions are the post-renovation breakfast pastry, the slightly under-scaled spa for the property’s high-season volume, and the Wi-Fi in the third-floor sea-view rooms, which the granite headland degrades in the same way it degrades at Hotel du Cap.
The Standard
| Dimension | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | 4.9 | The headland, the harbour view, three sea exposures. |
| Suites | 4.4 | Post-renovation parquet underwhelms; older monastery rooms better. |
| Service | 4.7 | The hat retrieval; the kitchen-garden walk; the shuttle logistics. |
| Table | 4.6 | Corti’s grammar; the lunch terrace at 60 covers without slip. |
| Detail | 4.4 | Pool, shuttle, tide note. Pastry programme has slipped. |
Property score: 4.60.
Verdict
At the Standard.
The Splendido is the canonical Italian Riviera proposition: a 16th-century monastery converted to a hotel in 1901, run by a serious operating group with veteran tenure, on a headland that no competitor can replicate, with a view that has been on the cover of every Riviera guidebook for sixty years. The 2024-2025 refurbishment has been mostly good for the property, though I would defend the older travertine floors and the unrenovated monastery rooms over the post-renovation third-floor stock.
If you are choosing between the Splendido and the Belmond’s other Italian flagships — Cipriani in Venice, Villa San Michele in Fiesole — for a single Italian week, the Splendido is the option that most rewards the slower, terrace-led Riviera grammar. Cipriani is the city hotel; Villa San Michele is the Tuscan hill estate; the Splendido is the headland.
Reservations
Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Salita Baratta 16, 16034 Portofino, Italy. Reservations: +39 0185 267 801 or via Belmond’s central booking. The 2026 season runs 26 March to 8 November.
May rates from EUR 1,890 for a Classic room (interior view); Junior Suites with sea view from EUR 2,750; the property’s principal suite (the Suite Splendido, the rebuilt 2025 master with private rooftop terrace) from EUR 14,200.
Genoa Cristoforo Colombo airport (GOA) is a 65-minute transfer; the hotel will arrange a Mercedes S-Class. From Milan Malpensa, the most efficient routing is the high-speed rail to Santa Margherita Ligure (3 hours total) followed by the hotel’s car. Helicopter transfer from Genoa is available on request and runs roughly EUR 2,800 one-way.
Standing Questions
- Is the hotel walkable to Portofino village?
- Not really. The Splendido sits on a headland roughly 80 metres above the village; the walk down is a 12-minute zigzag on a steep path, and the walk back up is genuinely demanding. The hotel runs a free shuttle every 15 minutes during operating hours.
- Is the Splendido open year-round?
- No. It is a seasonal hotel running broadly mid-March to mid-November. The 2026 season opened on 26 March and closes on 8 November. The Splendido Mare — the sister property down in the village square — runs the same dates.
- Is the saltwater pool actually saltwater?
- Yes. The pool is filled with filtered Mediterranean seawater pumped from the bay and is heated to 26 degrees in May. The chlorine is low; the salt content is roughly 3 percent.
- Is there a beach club?
- Not on the Splendido site. The Splendido Mare in the village holds the boat dock and runs day-boat excursions to the Cinque Terre and the Tigullio coast. The Splendido's own pool is the principal water option.
- Did the hotel close for renovation recently?
- Yes. The Splendido closed for an 18-month renovation in October 2023 and reopened on 11 April 2025 under a Belmond-led refurbishment that touched all 64 rooms, the spa, and the main public spaces.
