Our history
“Chiara Fontana teaches tax law at the Federico II University of Naples. Giovanni Riccardi is a well-known lawyer of the city bar, originally from the Cilento area of Sapri. Their children met in kindergarten and grew up as brothers, engaging mainly in sports. “I was born in Naples, my father is from Salerno ". "As a child we lived in the Salerno area with the sea on the horizon, surrounded by green hills. It was the home of my childhood and probably in my unconscious it was the home where I would have liked to live forever. In Naples I teach, I deal with the tax association, I take care of my children, it is a dynamic life, intense but not always satisfying. With Giovanni we talked from time to time to create something together, as partners. For whim, I happened to read in the newspapers the offers for hotels on the coast rather than other similar amenities. I did not know Cilento, like many bells. I saw an advertisement for an old hotel for sale. I went to Castellabate.The place was magical. It was my place, with the sea on the horizon and green hills planted with olive trees, vineyards, fig trees all around. Castellabate is also a magical place, with a moving story. Giovanni came, our children came. We started a long one, difficult negotiation. Palazzo Gentilcore is very old, It dates back to 1100. It was factory first, noble palace from 1745 of the De Angelis family, seat of the Municipality and of the Prefecture from 1931, finally hotel from 1967 by a German company. It was his moment of greatest glory, with the piano on the top terrace. From the De Angelis it passed to another noble family, i Matarazzo. In the nineties, new ownership was transferred, to the lady from whom we purchased it. It took steady nerves and a cool head as well as strong determination. We were able to conclude the deed in front of the notary. Giovanni summoned us to the hotel, he had brought pickaxes for everyone, including our children, and distributed them to us. We knocked down the floors, and sanitary, everything that had to be removed without the building falling on our heads. I even found myself, dressed in an elegant suit, driving a pick up truck full of sanitary ware to the ecological island. I shouldn't have done it, it was an emergency, so I drove that beast on four wheels to the ecological island. Here it is difficult to find a straight. When the local workers found out what I had done, they adopted me: I was one of “their".
Gives: HOTEL TOMORROW, of 2 February 2020, by Giovanni Gentili, a pag. 28.
A LITTLE JEWEL
"It was our children who chose the three key colors that marked the reconstruction of the hotel: the green, the turquoise, the blue of Prussia ”continues Chiara Fontana. “The thirteen rooms are all different, except for the bathroom module, which includes a full-wall shower enclosure with a vertical element with shower head and side jets and a mobile hand shower. A couple of 13 accommodation units have two double bedrooms, ideal for families with children. Some rooms have rock arches that we wanted to keep. We find them very suggestive as well as a sign of time and the changes experienced by the building, ditto a burned corner, which recalls the motions of 1828, permanent memory also imprinted in the living material of the building. For the floors we have adopted Vietri ceramics, hand painted in the Solimene Artistic Ceramics factory, with changing colors and designs room by room, also referring to drawings by Giò Ponti; some floors alternate ceramics with olive wood. The floors of the common areas are in Ogliara terracotta, the homeland of Salerno terracotta. The names of the rooms refer to the hamlets of Castellabate, A widespread municipality that also includes the coast that faces the gulf in front of the village. The only one that does not refer to the hamlets is the Castello room because it recalls the previous Hotel Castello, that we purchased in 2018. The beds are big, with mattresses designed to facilitate sleep. A very famous character from the world of cinema came to us tired on a rainy evening, nervous. He wanted to see all the rooms, he chose one of the two that have the loggia. The next morning he wanted to see me: he wanted to know who had provided us with the mattresses. He wanted to buy one for his home, smell. He had never slept so well. We sent it to Kythera Mattresses in Sapri which makes them. He had to stop one day, he stopped for a whole week. It was not the only case. We have used artisans and companies from the territory and only from the territory. We have recovered antique wardrobes to insert history into contemporary furnishings. On the walls there are works by José Ortega, Spanish revolutionary painter, pupil of Picasso, who lived in Bosco for twenty years, in Cilento, where there is a museum dedicated to him. The artist decided to settle there because the peasant village was similar to that of his childhood and the inhabitants were poor, with their face darkened and hardened by the sun, they called his people. Then, Bosco's story made up of people rebelling against Bourbon power is intertwined with the experience of the painter, who fought the Franco dictatorship from the age of fifteen, paying with prison and farewell to his beloved Spain. Da Bosco in June 1828 the first libertarian uprisings in Cilento had started, violently repressed in the blood. The town was set on fire by the Bourbons, razed to the ground and canceled forever from the Register of Municipalities "for tyrannical vengeance burned, because first he explained the tricolor ". To remember the incident is a majolica mural painted by Ortega himself, located at the entrance to the town, now known to all as the Guerniccilentana. In addition to Ortega, the paintings on display are by local artists with the aim of transforming 13 hotel rooms in rooms “by the author ".