Portrait Firenze

The Lungarno degli Acciaiuoli runs along the north bank of the Arno between the Ponte Santa Trinita and the Ponte Vecchio. Portrait Firenze stands on it, in the centre of Florence, with its windows turned towards the old bridge and the goldsmiths' shops that hang over the water. The Ferragamo family opened the hotel in 2014 as the Florentine house of its Portrait series, a small group of suite hotels that also counts Portrait Roma and, since 2022, Portrait Milano.

History

Salvatore Ferragamo settled in Florence in 1927, after a decade making shoes for the film studios of California, and in 1938 bought Palazzo Spini Feroni, the medieval palace on Via Tornabuoni that still houses the company and its museum. His descendants moved into hotels through Lungarno Collection, the hospitality company they own, which runs Hotel Lungarno on the south bank of the Arno, the Gallery Hotel Art and the Continentale, all within a few hundred metres of one another.

Portrait Firenze followed in 2014. It dropped the usual hotel plan in favour of suites only, each with its own kitchen, and replaced the reception desk with a team of hosts who handle restaurant bookings, drivers and private museum visits.

Architecture and design

Michele Bönan, the Florentine architect behind most Lungarno Collection interiors, planned the rooms. His palette is dark wood, grey and black with brass trim, and the walls carry black-and-white photographs of Florence in the 1950s, when the fashion shows staged in the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti launched Italian ready-to-wear and the Ferragamo name travelled with it. The building is a riverside palazzo of modest height; inside, the plan reads as a stack of apartments rather than corridors of bedrooms, which is what the family wanted.

Rooms and suites

There are 37 suites, from studios to apartments with several bedrooms, every one with a kitchenette or a full kitchen, a walk-in wardrobe and a marble bathroom. Some have balconies or terraces over the river. The suites on the upper floors look at the Ponte Vecchio on one side and upstream towards the hills on the other, and the top-floor terraces take in the whole skyline, Duomo included. Among luxury hotels in Florence this is one of the few where every key opens an apartment, and families and long-stay guests use it that way.

Dining

Caffè dell'Oro occupies the ground floor with a terrace on the Lungarno. It serves breakfast to residents and lunch and dinner to anyone who books, with a short menu of Tuscan dishes, and the bar stays open into the evening. The name recalls the goldsmiths of the Ponte Vecchio a few steps away. Guests also have the run of the other Lungarno Collection restaurants nearby, including Borgo San Jacopo at Hotel Lungarno across the river, which holds a Michelin star.

Weddings and events

There is no ballroom and no conference floor. The larger suites and the terrace of Caffè dell'Oro take private dinners for small parties, and the whole house can be taken by a wedding party that wants to stay together in the centre of the city while the ceremony and the reception are held elsewhere in Florence.

Location

The hotel is in the centro storico, on the north bank. The Uffizi, Piazza della Signoria and the Duomo are each within ten minutes on foot; Via Tornabuoni and the Ferragamo museum are closer still. Santa Maria Novella station is about 15 minutes' walk. Florence airport at Peretola is 6 km away, roughly 20 minutes by taxi, and Pisa airport is about an hour by road or by train.