Belmond The Cadogan vs Villa San Michele, A Belmond Hotel, Florence

Sixty-seven keys, and it behaves like it: staff learn your name by the first night, and the small gestures that follow (Arsenal scarves for a match mentioned only in passing, an anniversary cake, a teddy bear dressed on a child's bed) turn up in review after review, months and different guests apart. Several guests independently credit general manager Russell Pratt by name for setting the tone. The Chelsea location, opposite the private garden and a few minutes from Sloane Street and the Kings Road, is the other thing nobody disputes.

The catch is the base room. Deluxe rooms run small for the money, more than one guest has said the photos oversell the square footage, and one traveller was quietly rebooked from a junior suite into a standard room by a third-party booking error, only finding out the day before arrival. Book above the Deluxe category if you can. Wellness is thin too: there's no real spa program, and gym access has been inconsistent enough that at least one recent guest simply found it shut for their whole stay. This is a townhouse, not a resort, and it doesn't pretend otherwise once you're standing in an empty gym.

Suite rooms are where the money is well spent: the marble-and-mosaic bathrooms get singled out constantly, and Willetts' risotto and breakfast draw specific, repeated praise rather than generic five-star box-ticking. One guest fought a billing dispute over a broken radiator: the only sour note anyone's struck in months. Book a junior suite for the townhouse at its best: the marble bathrooms, Willetts downstairs, and staff who'll know your name by dinner.

Villa San Michele is the hotel most Florence conversations circle back to: a converted 15th-century monastery with a facade attributed to Michelangelo, terraced grounds above the city, and a view of the Duomo that guests consistently say outlasts the photos. It reopened in April 2026 after an 18-month Belmond renovation, so almost every trip report we have predates that work, worth flagging if you're booking on "freshly redone rooms" rather than the setting, which has carried the place for decades regardless.

Staff get named unprompted, over and over — a pool bartender, a breakfast waiter, a team built around one specific person — for attentiveness that shows up exactly when needed and disappears when it isn't wanted. Loggia dinners under the stars come up repeatedly as the actual highlight of people's Florence trip, not just the hotel stay. The 20-30 minute hillside distance from central Florence is the real trade-off: the shuttle runs reliably, but you're planning around it rather than wandering down for a spontaneous aperitivo. Service isn't uniform on every shift, either, with occasional lapses at the front desk and in the dining room.

Worth booking for the setting, the loggia dinners, and staff who make you feel looked after rather than processed.