New W lodge Florence brings fashionable swagger to the cradle of the Renaissance

Florence is among the nice capitals of the Outdated World, house to breathtaking landmarks that span the Romanesque to the Renaissance. Extensively considered the cradle of that period, it was right here that the Medici household funded Michelangelo, Brunelleschi and Galileo, turning town into an inventive, banking and mental engine.

W Florence, nonetheless, is new. Opened in July 2025 as Italy’s second W (after Rome), the lodge represents Florence’s new wave of design-forward, lifestyle-oriented establishments. It’s a counterpoint to town’s gilded however ageing grandes dames, but unmistakably channels the inventive spirit of its host – whereas sustaining the worldwide polish of a Marriott model.

Wallpaper* checks in at W Florence

What’s in your doorstep?

Its location could also be one in all W Florence’s best attracts: it sits on Piazza dell’Unità Italiana, bang within the centre of town. Florence is eminently walkable, and from right here you’re mere steps from the Duomo, Santa Maria Novella and the Medici Chapel. We additionally discovered ourselves seduced by Florence’s subtler pleasures: affogato standing on the counter of Café Gilli and drifting out and in of antiques outlets in crowd-free Santo Spirito.

Who’s behind the design?

W Florence occupies a constructing designed between 1968 and 1972 by architect Lando Bartoli; after a long time of neglect, it was restored by Genius Loci Architettura (GLA). In a metropolis stacked with medieval and Renaissance ornamentation, Bartoli’s rationalist-modernist construction – with its stone façade, slender home windows and burnished bronze parts – stands aside. It’s one in all Florence’s few seen examples of Twentieth-century structure.

The model new interiors, by design agency AvroKO, draw closely from the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, expressed via geometric varieties, sculptural furnishings and moody lighting (the initiated can also spot gestures towards Italian design greats like Joe Colombo). The areas quietly reference Florence’s creative heritage, via graphic flooring and curved banquettes. The palette additionally echoes town in notes of Boboli Backyard inexperienced and Medici pink, and an unlimited Adam Ellis Studio mural – a ‘Florentine Babylon Backyard’ of tigers, peacocks and monkeys, a reference to the Medici menagerie – greets friends in reception.

The room to e book

The lodge has 119 rooms, together with 16 suites and a penthouse. Our Superior Twin felt comfy but elevated, with marble accents, terrazzo-inspired surfaces, and intentionally mismatched artwork. A placing mild set up above the mattress makes use of mirrors and built-in LEDs to create the phantasm of infinite receding arches – a nod to Florence’s vaulted landmarks, from Palazzo Pitti to the Vasari Hall. A classy semicircular cupboard homes the minibar, full with – naturally – negronis, the drink having been born in Florence.

The penthouse expands upon these signatures, but it surely’s the 140 sq m non-public terrace that units it aside. On a November night tour, the vantage level revealed stacks of orange-lit home windows, every providing a vignette of Florentine life, whereas the illuminated Duomo rose, magnificently shut, via the darkness. In summer time, the terrace should be a blessed escape from the sweltering streets. The identical goes for the lodge’s Zefiro Rooftop, named for the Greek god of the west wind, depicted in Botticelli’s Beginning of Venus, which resides in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

On the lodge’s foremost restaurant, Tratto – run by the workforce behind the Michelin-starred Trattoria Contemporanea close to Lake Como – graphic menu covers announce that that is ‘Italian modern meals’. This implies grilled Chinese language cabbage with kimchi sauce and peanut butter, veal tripe stew with mint and pecorino, and squid skewers with bell pepper and nduja mayo. There’s not a slice of pizza on the premises, however we did attempt a easy however oh-so-effective egg pasta with lemon, butter and Parmesan and a cream-forward tiramisù from a dessert trolley curated by one of many nation’s rising pastry stars. A second restaurant, Akira Again – named for the Korean-American chef with a worldwide portfolio of 28 eating places – opens quickly, bringing his ‘new Asian’ sensibility to W Florence.

Within the W Lounge, the place a blue lava stone bar meets wiggly banquettes in velvet and boucle, the cocktail menu is helpfully illustrated so you recognize whether or not to count on a coupe or a highball. Like Tratto, the bar takes one thing acquainted and twists it – a negroni with a whisper of coconut, or a gimlet with a salty foam (a nod to the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci).

The place to modify off