Villa Igiea is a palazzo on a precipice, 15 minutes outside of central Palermo (there is a hotel shuttle mini-bus). Quiet, airy and with magnificent azure views across the Gulf of Palermo out to the Tyrrhenian sea and its islands on the horizon, it was a villa bought by the tuna-tinning, Marsala-exporting Florio family, who had originally intended to build a sanatorium as their daughter, Igiea, had tuberculosis. Economic sense took over and in 1899, Florio and his socialite wife Franca hired the renowned local architect Ernesto Basile to create a hotel that became a Belle Epoque institution. Edward VII and George V, Nicholas II of Russia – and later Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster – all stayed or visited. The ballroom became the place for a Palermo wedding reception, presumably directed in an overexposed haze by Coppola.
Palermo coastline
Holger Leue/ Getty Images
