La Fiermontina: A Lecce Hotel Built as a Love Letter to the Woman Two Sculptors Adored
Lecce's marquee design hotel is also its most personal, built by Giacomo Fiermonte as a tribute to his grandmother Antonia
La Fiermontina is the hotel everyone writes about in Lecce, and for once the consensus is right — though not quite for the reason you'd guess. Underneath the design-magazine gloss, it's a love letter. Giacomo Fiermonte built it as a tribute to his grandmother, Antonia Fiermonte, and the two sculptors who loved her.
Antonia was a violinist and a Parisian muse. At seventeen she met the sculptor René Letourneur, married him, and bore a daughter — then left him for his closest friend and studio partner, Jacques Zwobada, whom she married instead. She died at forty-two, in 1956, and a grieving Zwobada built her a mausoleum outside Rome. Their work now stands all through the house: a Letourneur sketch of Antonia faces a Zwobada bust of her in the lobby, and his marble La Liberté presides over the dining room.
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The house itself is a seventeenth-century Lecce residence that Fiermonte — who first meant to live in it — had the local architect Antonio Annicchiarico rebuild as a modern masseria, in the same cream stone as the city, with pietra di Trani floors and star-patterned stone ceilings. The nineteen rooms, and four more in the adjoining Fiermonte Museum, are furnished with vintage Charlotte Perriand and pieces tied to Le Corbusier; the walled garden — a rare thing inside Lecce's old town — holds century-old olives and a pool.
Dinner is at Zéphyr, in the citrus courtyard: two small rooms, a couple of tasting menus, open to the city as well as the house. Lecce's baroque center is at the door and the Adriatic twenty minutes out, Brindisi's airport under an hour. Come for the art and stay for the story; ask to be walked through the sculptures, and take dinner in the garden under the orange trees.
PROPERTY DNA
Ownership | Independent, family-run (the Fiermonte family); the anchor of a small collection with houses in Lecce, Paris, and Morocco |
Era & Design | A 17th-century Lecce residence, substantially rebuilt as a modern take on the masseria by architect Antonio Annicchiarico, in the city's cream-colored stone. |
Setting | Inside Lecce's old town, behind 16th-century walls, around a private walled garden of century-old olive and citrus trees, with a pool; about 40 minutes to Brindisi airport. |
Rooms | 19 (16 rooms + 3 suites), plus four Fiermonte Museum suites; pietra di Trani floors, star-patterned stone ceilings. |
Designs & Makers | Architect Antonio Annicchiarico; sculptures by René Letourneur and Jacques Zwobada throughout; vintage Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier pieces. |