Benedictine monks laid the Splendido’s foundations in the 16th century; MICHELIN now gives it Three Keys. Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino, moves up from the Two Keys it held in 2025, and its sister on the harbour, Splendido Mare, moves up from One Key to Two. The third Ligurian hotel on the list is the Grand Hotel Miramare, at Santa Margherita Ligure, which keeps One Key, so the region has three in all, as in 2025, and all three stand on the Gulf of Tigullio. Liguria had no Three-Key hotel in 2025. The Splendido is one of four Italian hotels new or promoted at Three Keys in 2026. The tiers come from MICHELIN’s complete list of the Italian Keys, published in Italian on 18 September, and the regional count is ours. Its English page for Italy still shows the 2025 selection, with both Portofino hotels a tier lower.
Three hotels on the Gulf of Tigullio: Liguria’s 2026 list
Tiers and towns are as MICHELIN prints them, and room counts are those on each hotel’s MICHELIN page.
| Keys | Hotel | Town | Rooms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three | Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino (up from Two) | Portofino | 52 |
| Two | Splendido Mare, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino (up from One) | Portofino | 14 |
| One | Grand Hotel Miramare | Santa Margherita Ligure | 72 |
The three have 138 rooms between them. Portofino’s two have 66. The Miramare alone has 72.
Splendido at Three Keys: 16th-century foundations above the bay
“Safe to say this one lives up to its name.”
That is MICHELIN’s verdict on the Splendido, at Salita Baratta 16, above the bay. “The foundations were laid by Benedictine monks in the 16th century”, the page notes, and of the 52 rooms and suites, “Just about all of them face out to sea”. In 2025 the designer Martin Brudnizki redecorated them. MICHELIN’s Italian text credits his project with strengthening the hotel’s Ligurian identity, through Genoese terrazzo, Lavagna stone and Albisola ceramics. “Più che reinventare lo Splendido, il progetto ne ha riaffermato l’appartenenza a Portofino”, it says: rather than reinventing the Splendido, the project reaffirmed that it belongs to Portofino.
The hotel has “the first Dior Spa in Italy” and a heated salt-water pool above the water. Dinner is at La Terrazza, cocktails at Baratta Sedici, and a shuttle runs down to Splendido Mare at sea level. Genoa airport is a 45-minute drive. The Splendido was No. 60 in the World’s 50 Best Hotels extended list, as in our report on the 51 to 100 list, and in 2027 the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express ends its Paris to Portofino trip with two nights here, as in our guide to the train’s 2027 journeys. The season is short. The hotel opens from April through October.
Splendido Mare at Two Keys: 14 rooms and a gelateria on the piazza
Splendido Mare stands at Via Roma 2, on Piazza Martiri dell’Olivetta, the village’s central square, a few steps from the harbour. Studio Festen redesigned it in 2021, drawing on Portofino’s nautical history and “the retro glamour of its midcentury heyday”, and the lobby and the bar now have terracotta floors and “original artworks by Ligurian artists”, with bathrooms in Carrara marble. Its 14 rooms range from simple ones over the piazza to suites that “come with private balconies facing the marina”. The signature suite takes the whole penthouse level, with a garden terrace of its own.
The hotel runs “its very own gelateria, a fifties-styled ice cream parlor”, with a window onto the square. The restaurant is DaV Mare. The bar serves aperitivi on the piazza. “It’s a toss-up whether it’s more pleasant inside or out”, MICHELIN writes.
Grand Hotel Miramare: 72 rooms on Santa Margherita Ligure’s seafront
Five kilometres along the coast, at Via Milite Ignoto 30 in Santa Margherita Ligure, “the Grand Hotel Miramare rises proudly above the waterfront”. It is an Art Nouveau palace, “reminiscent of an ornate wedding cake”, and “most rooms offer sweeping views of the bay”, while the rear rooms face a wooded hillside. “The hotel’s style has remained largely untouched over the years”, the inspectors write, “making the Miramare a delightful step back in time”. It has a restaurant, a heated sea-water pool, a wellness area and “a private beach club just across the road”. The pool closes in mid-October and the beach service at the end of September, so both reopen in 2027. The station is about a kilometre away.
From Genoa to Lerici: the rest of the Ligurian coast
MICHELIN’s list has no Key hotel in Genoa, the Cinque Terre, the Gulf of La Spezia or the Riviera di Ponente, in either year. The coast is changing at its eastern end. At Lerici, on the Gulf of Poets, The Meliá Collection is planning a luxury hotel, as in our report on the project. Genoa, meanwhile, held its boat show in September, with 1,000 boats and 215 new models, as in our guide to the show.
The Luxury.it perspective
Liguria’s list is short and concentrated. All three hotels stand within a few kilometres of one another on the Gulf of Tigullio, and two of them, both Belmond, share a village and a shuttle. Each Portofino hotel moves up one tier, which gives the village a Three-Key and a Two-Key address in the same year: the Splendido for the view over the bay, Splendido Mare for life on the piazza. The Miramare is the Belle Époque alternative, a few minutes away. The calendar decides the rest. The Splendido closes at the end of October and reopens in April, and the beach clubs keep summer hours. For a Riviera trip that crosses the border, the 24 Key hotels of the Côte d’Azur and Monaco are in our list for the French Riviera.
Related guides
Italy’s 17 Three-Key hotels · Italy’s 49 Two-Key hotels · The Portofino style guide · The Key hotels of Lake Como
