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Jumeirah Capri Palace: Six Decades of Design on the Island of Capri

Long before the art hotel became a hospitality category, Jumeirah Capri Palace — originally conceived in 1961 by Gianfranco Frattini, pupil of Gio Ponti — was quietly assembling one of the most significant collections of contemporary art in the Italian south, with works by Arnaldo Pomodoro, Giorgio De Chirico, Keith Haring, and Mimmo Paladino running alongside interiors by Patricia Urquiola and Giuliano Dell'Uva. The result is a property that has never needed to announce its design credentials because the design has simply always been there.

Jumeirah Capri Palace sits in Anacapri — the quieter, higher part of the island, removed from the crowds of the piazzetta below — and its origins are as much a design story as a hospitality one. The hotel opened in 1960 as Hotel Europa Palace, the creation of Mario and Rita Cacace, whose boutique Mariorita had already established a foothold on the island in the 1950s. The architectural commission came in 1961, when Cesare Cassina introduced Mario Cacace to Gianfranco Frattini, a young Milanese architect and pupil of Gio Ponti then collaborating with him on the Royal Hotel in Naples. Frattini's design was quietly radical: clean Mediterranean volumes, a building in dialogue with the landscape, and a fully transparent pool — still present today — that was considered genuinely revolutionary for its era.

The hotel grew season by season into a reference point for Italian luxury, passing from the Cacace family to the Doğuş group in the mid-2010s and finally to Jumeirah in 2019, each chapter adding new layers to a property that has never stopped accumulating.

A monumental site-specific installation by Arnaldo Pomodoro runs the length of the entrance wall, evoking the seabed through colossal sculptural elements; Mimmo Paladino's stoic bronze helmet marks the threshold of the main entrance; a 17th-century monastery grille frames the reception desk alongside Giorgio De Chirico's Ettore e Andromaca; and works by Keith Haring, Fabrizio Plessi, and Mario Schifano punctuate the public spaces throughout. The pool, Frattini's original transparent marvel, now has a Velasco Vitali mosaic on its floor, visible through the glass walls from the entrance — a detail that captures perfectly the hotel's approach of treating every surface as a potential site for intervention. The 68 rooms and suites extend that logic further: some reference the Mediterranean palette through the Capritouch collection of whites and blues, others are dedicated to Warhol, Magritte, and Miró, while the most recent addition — five Mariorita suites designed by Patricia Urquiola — represents the latest and most coherent chapter in the property's design history.

The Mariorita suites, named in tribute to Rita Cacace, the wife of the original proprietor, unfold as a meditative exploration of contrast, with a serene lounge setting the tone through soft whites, pigmented blues, and earthy neutrals. Urquiola worked with undulating Cimento plaster to craft ripples across the walls, echoing the motion of waves against Capri's cliffs, while Palladian flooring stretches through the lounge and hand-crafted Vietri tiles dress the columns, walls, and custom furniture — celebrating the region's deep tradition of craftsmanship.

Extending beyond the suites, Urquiola also reimagined the hotel's outdoor spaces, unifying the Bar degli Artisti, pool bar, and newly landscaped lounge terrace with Palladian flooring and a lush Caprese garden — ensuring that the visual and material language she introduced reads as a complete environment rather than a series of isolated rooms. For a hotel that has been in continuous evolution since 1961, it is a fittingly rigorous next step.