A fourteenth-century Dominican monastery perched on the edge of a Sicilian cliff, with Etna rising snow-capped to the southwest and the Ionian Sea dropping away beneath the terrace walls — this is the structural inheritance that Four Seasons accepted when it took over San Domenico Palace Taormina and undertook a years-long restoration completed in 2021. The brief was unusually demanding: animate a building that had already spent centuries accumulating gravity, without flattening what made it remarkable. The interiors, designed by Patricia Urquiola, thread contemporary warmth through the monastery's bones rather than competing with them. Guest rooms carry upholstered headboards in taupe-toned velvet, pendant lights in blown glass, and onyx-veined marble side tables, the palette kept deliberately close to the building's own warm plasterwork so that old and new remain in quiet conversation. The restaurant preserves the original colonnaded hall with its tall arched windows and herringbone parquet floors, Urquiola adding circular iron pendant rings and loose grey armchairs that bring the room forward without disturbing its proportions. Outside, the infinity pool terrace — striped canvas umbrellas, teak loungers, a balustrade view over Giardini Naxos far below — makes the monastery's clifftop position the defining amenity. The property holds around 111 rooms across the historic convent building and a more recent wing, the two volumes visible in the exterior images as salmon-washed stucco stepping down through terraced gardens of cypress and palm.

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