Dating back to the 14th century, this magnificent former monastery, which has been a hotel since 1896, stands on the cliffs overlooking the Ionian Sea in Taormina, with Mount Etna to its right and the city’s ancient Greek theatre to its left. Although Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts added a good dollop of 21st-century luxury when they took San Domenico over, redecorating the rooms in the 19th-century wing and adding private plunge pools to some of the terraces there, they have been careful to retain the many impressive historical elements, from the statue-filled courtyards to the stone doorway you enter through. The charm that enticed Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Greta Garbo and Humphrey Bogart among many other celebrities of their day, remains, as does the hotel’s links to the screen – most recently as a setting for the Netflix series, The White Lotus.
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