Page 62 - Designing Ways 272

ON THE
TERRACE

Quiet Luxury With Lake View - La Darbia Hotel Enchants
Sophisticated Travelers

Orta San Giulio, Italy

rchitect brothers Gian Carlo siren-like beauty, and the mood of those

and Matteo Primatesta have times still linger in the air.
Aventured into unknown territory While the tourist crowds in Northern
by transforming an abandoned rural Italy flock to Lake Maggiore, and spotlights
settlement on Piedmont’s Lake Orta into shine on glamorous Lake Como, Lake Orta
a sophisticated holiday hideaway that remains a relatively unknown treasure to
reflects quiet luxury and Italian Dolce Vita most of the world. On its eastern shore –
at its finest. Their secret of success: being just above the historical centre of Orta San
self-taught hoteliers with a predisposition Giulio – the elegant hamlet La Darbia is
for silent aesthetics. quietly tucked away, surrounded by a lush,
Just an hour north of Milan, not far Mediterranean park designed by landscape
from the Swiss border, the narrow, barely architect Anna Regge, as well as lovingly
13 km long Lake Orta shimmers in the cultivated Nebbiolo vineyards. With a
protected embrace of Monte Rosa. The breathtaking view of the shimmering lake
second highest peak of the Alps rises and the peaks of Monte Rosa, the holiday
4,634 metres into the sky, framed by hideaway redefines the connotation of
the contrasting landscape of Piedmont luxury with soulful aesthetics and a truly
and its many cultural treasures. The empathetic hospitality.
Belle Époque gave Lago d’Orta and Becoming hoteliers was a whole new
its picturesque lakeside towns eclectic experience for the founders of Studio
buildings and pretty promenades. Lord Primatesta, but it turned out that this was
Byron, Nietzsche, and Balzac, like many exactly what makes “La Darbia” the place
other intellectuals and artists at the turn to be for connoisseurs in search of beauty
of the century, were inspired by the lake’s in design and depth in detail.

62 Issue 272 • dw