The gardens at the San Domenico Palace are scented by 40 different types of lemon tree
(Picture: Evening Standard)I’m lying by the pool at a five-star hotel in Sicily, November sun somehow still 10 times warmer than London has been in months, sipping on a cocktail made of I don’t know what, because it was just handed to me and I didn’t bother to ask. Mount Etna looms above me, judging: who does this girl think she is? A character from The White Lotus?
Actually, that’s exactly what I am. Because I’ve gone to San Domenico Palace, the real-life home of The White Lotus season two, and I’m living as close to an HBO budget as life can get.
Despite the hotel being the namesake of the show, the first thing that comes to mind when you think about The White Lotus is rarely where it is set. It’s more likely to be Jennifer Coolidge’s trademark drawl that springs to mind, or Sydney Sweeney’s ice-cold Gen Z sniping, or Theo James’ uh … appendage.
HBO’s resort-themed dramedy series reached cult status in just one season last year, following the holiday experiences of the fictional super wealthy and mega entitled, with the likes of Connie Britton and Murray Bartlett bringing them to life (and then, in some cases, death).
Sensing the public’s thirst for more, and basking in its healthy audience size – 9.3 million viewers on average per episode across platforms in the US alone – HBO quickly set about making a second season, which started airing last week.
This time we’re greeted with a fresh crop of awful rich people: aside from Coolidge’s Emmy-winning role as Tanya McQuoid, which she reprises, and her husband Greg, every face is new. So far, we’ve had two episodes to adjust to our new brat pack as they adjust to The White Lotus in Taormina, Sicily.
So I figured I’d do some adjusting myself. A weekend at The White Lotus’ real-life counterpart, the San Domenico Palace, a Four Seasons hotel built around a 14th-century convent, shows just how close to reality the show cuts it.
The San Domenico Palace has been a hotel for 126 years and a Four Seasons for just one, opening in its current form on July 1 last year. The windows of its rooms overlook the hotel’s extensive gardens, then the 2-metre infinity pool, then the Ionian Sea. It smells, and I really mean this, inconceivably good. And not just because of the 40 types of lemon tree that populate the gardens – we clarified at the front desk and there is someone who devotedly spritzes the hallways with a Four Seasons spatial perfume. Not available for purchase, believe me I tried.
On the other side of the building, San Domenico’s entrance sits just behind the main streets of Taormina, a town which, it turns out, was already entirely prepared for a crowd of pseudo-millionaires to descend, flanked by film crews. After all, they get the real thing every summer.
And more: Donald Trump and other heads of state were guests at San Domenico during the G7 summit in 2017, allegedly clogging up the town’s tiny streets with their grand convoys. Beyond the White Potus, Francis Ford Coppola checked into the hotel during the Taormina film festival this year, and Sharon Stone spent a few nights following Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda fashion show in the summer.
Setting San Domenico as the holiday backdrop of the super rich, then, was not too far a stretch. Taormina is built for the wealthy, with fewer touristy tack shops and more Dior, Rolex, Benetton and Gucci shop fronts. You can practically hear Meghann Fahy’s character Daphne remarking on the Dior jewellery to her doting husband as you walk the town’s cobbled streets.
The hotel will set you back a minimum of £984 a night for this time of year, with that figure reaching the thousands come summer. The numbers might seem hard to justify, but the Four Seasons does everything it can to do so. During our stay in a sea view superior room, we were treated to fine dining, fresh breakfast buffets and local fish caught that day. And everything had to go over and beyond the likes of a typical hotel: for example, the prosciutto served at the breakfast was not just an offering on a plate, but sliced for you individually by a dedicated waiter with a meat carver.
The hotel has four kitchens, three for its three respective restaurants: Principe Cerami, its gourmet restaurant led by an award-winning chef, Massimo Mantarro, which is currently looking to secure a Michelin star, Bar and Chiostro for lighter bites, and Anciovi, the sea-view pool restaurant only open in high season. Oh, and the fourth kitchen is for banquets, obviously.
One of the first White Lotus titbits you notice walking around San Domenico is the presence of those threatening, decorative head statues (the kind Jennifer Coolidge imagines when having sex with her husband), which mark nearly every location. The statues represent an old local wives’ tale of forbidden love: way back when in 1100, a Sicilian woman fell in love with an Arabic fighter only to find out he had a wife at home, so she beheaded him and used his head as a plant pot in her vivid balcony garden, because she still enjoyed looking at him so much (fair). No spoilers for the end of White Lotus episode two, but there are some parallels appearing.
It’s clear from the whole Taormina experience, not just the hotel, that White Lotus creator Mike White spent considerable time in the town, shaping his story into its setting. The characters visit all the main tourist hotspots, just like we did. In episode two alone, the Di Grassos visit the ancient Greek amphitheatre, cameras pan over renowned beach Isalo Bella, and Aubrey Plaza’s husband, Ethan, played by Will Sharpe, goes on a run to the crucifix that sits atop the town’s main hill (Via Crucis). Like the first season’s turn in Maui, White is careful to curate the story around its location, instead of dumping a bunch of characters and their arcs in a nice hotel and hoping for the best.
That being said, the hotel is very, very nice. The rest of San Domenico comprises a room for its historical art, a ballroom, another garden and its grand cloister, a central courtyard that acts as extended bar seating. At night, the cloister is entirely candlelit and as you’re being served heavily alcoholic, perfectly mixed drinks in near darkness it almost feels a bit cloak and dagger – anything could happen in that lighting. Maybe this space is where Mike White realised that San Domenico would be perfect for The White Lotus, given its current rate of at least one murder per season.
But let’s be clear, the hotel doesn’t feel nearly as murderous or debauched as The White Lotus wants you to think it is: San Domenico makes a concerted effort to make guests feel comfortable at every turn, and while the money is flowing, the booze and bad behaviour is not.
You’re too busy being taken care of. If you take a dip in the pool, you will be met with a complimentary nonalcoholic cocktail post-swim, placed by your sunlounger without you even noticing. If you leave a book on your nightstand, housekeeping will place a bookmark inside the dust cover.
When a weather warning-level thunderstorm happened one night, it was all over by the morning – against the predictions of forecasts – and it almost felt like the concierge had gone up and had a firm word with the clouds. I still keep offering my boyfriend still or sparkling bottled water, when we have neither at home, because I have been offered it so much over the past three days.
Plus, most interestingly, you’re treated to what seems to be a never-ending vibescape as you walk around the hotel: lo-fi beats gently pumping through carefully placed speakers wherever you go and, of course, the ever-present lingering fragrance, thanks to San Domenico’s secret spatial spritzer.
San Domenico, in short, gives you absolutely no excuse not to have a good time. Which only proves the entitlement of the White Lotus guests, who seem to be in a state of perpetual unhappiness, no matter how much they’re catered to, how beautiful the views are or how gourmet their food is. Ultimately, if it’s not too rich for your blood, San Domenico Palace is to die for. And, unlike the White Lotus cast, you’ll probably actually make it back in one piece.
