Dopo la Pioggia, Arriva il Sole (After the Rain Comes the Sun)

This year, Grand Hotel Miramare celebrates its 120th anniversary. We’ve distilled the past twelve decades into twelve principles that now guide our approach to life. Each principle is a lesson learned from each decade, with our second principle below covering 1913 to 1922.

This was a decade dominated by war.

Italy joined WW1 in April 1915, and it was a war that was deeply unpopular among troops and citizens. It left Italy with a number of post-war economic problems, not least because the Italian government had spent more on the war than it had in the previous 50 years. In fact, the debt Italy incurred to pay for the war was only finally paid back in the 1970s.

A short ten-minute walk from Grand Hotel Miramare is the Castello di Santa Margherita Ligure. Originally constructed in the middle of the sixteenth century to defend Santa Margherita from pirate attacks, after the war the Castello became a memorial to those who had lost their lives.

For obvious reasons, travel and luxury was limited during this decade. However, two important changes for the hotel occurred…

In a bid to attract more English clients, Torriani (the former owner of the hotel) gave us our current name: Miramare. The change in name worked, which leads us to…
The holiday season changed. Previously, travellers would visit in the winter months - from October to March - but now they came in the summer. This is an important switch as it led to much of the glamour that would follow in the 50s and 60s.

The war brought difficult years for all, with Italy perhaps one of the slowest countries to recover. Looking back now, this decade is a reminder that even the worst times can pass - a reminder reinforced by the pandemic - which leads us to our second life principle: after the rain comes the sun.

There’s a literal point in there with the holiday season switching to summer, but most importantly this principle is about recognising that we are all able to overcome most things eventually. The sunshine will always return and it’s this positivity that runs throughout the hotel today.