Hotel Il Pellicano

In 1965 an American couple named Michael and Patricia Graham found a clifftop on the Argentario peninsula in southern Tuscany and decided, with the particular confidence of people who know a good thing when they see it, that they would not be leaving. They built a small hotel, named it Il Pellicano after the place where they first met in California, and invited their friends. The friends told their friends. The friends of friends included the kind of people whose names you would recognize. Sixty years later, the hotel is still in the family and the pool still has the best view on the Maremma coast.

This is the origin story that matters for Il Pellicano because it explains everything about the hotel's character. It was never conceived as a business. It was conceived as a place to live well, and the distinction shows. The atmosphere is relaxed in the way that only genuinely confident places can be. There is no lobby theater, no performative luxury. Just a clifftop, a sea view, a Michelin-starred kitchen, and sixty years of knowing exactly what they are.

The Rooms

Thirty-one rooms and suites, almost all facing the sea. Classic rooms are compact but beautifully done — terracotta floors, Mediterranean fabrics, the kind of simplicity that takes effort to achieve. Sea-view suites have private terraces over the water. The cottages scattered through the terraced gardens offer the most privacy and the most space, with their own gardens and in some cases private pools. The Argentario Suite has two bedrooms, a private pool, and views that have been making people reconsider their lives since 1965.

Food & Drink

The Michelin-starred restaurant operates on a terrace with panoramic sea views and a kitchen that treats the Maremma's extraordinary larder — wild boar, local fish, hand-picked herbs — with the respect it deserves. The beach club serves lunch with the same quality and considerably less formality. The bar at aperitivo hour, with the sun dropping toward the archipelago, is one of the finer ways to spend an early evening in Italy.

The Experience

The pool is the heart of the hotel — a saltwater infinity pool on a cliffside terrace above the sea, with white loungers, attentive service, and the kind of view that makes it genuinely difficult to do anything else. A private beach is accessible by lift down the cliff face. The concierge arranges horse riding, trekking, and cycling through the Maremma — some of the least-visited countryside in Tuscany, just inland. The Etruscan ruins at Pitigliano and Sovana are an hour's drive north.

Worth Knowing

Il Pellicano is open April through October only — plan accordingly. Some guests at this price point have noted inconsistency in service, particularly during peak summer weeks when the hotel runs at full capacity with seasonal staff. It is worth mentioning this not to discourage but to calibrate — this is a hotel where the setting and the atmosphere are the primary luxury, and the service, while generally warm, is not at the level of a larger five-star operation. Book a sea-view room or suite without compromise. The inland rooms exist but are not why you come here.

"Some hotels are famous because they are the best. Il Pellicano is famous because there is nothing else quite like it — and nothing else quite like it anywhere on this coast."