Napoleone Melani

Napoleone Melani (Pistoia 1858 – 1917) was the first, great hotelier of the Bagni di Montecatini and one of the fathers of thermal hospitality between the 19th and 20th centuries.

He was the son of Elisa Valiani, whose parents Giuseppe and Carlotta had managed La Locanda Maggiore for many years until around 1880.

He then further strengthened his relationship with Montecatini by marrying a girl who was a genuine “bagniola”, Italia Silvestri, right in the city of waters in 1881.

From the mid-1880s he took over the management of La Locanda Maggiore, which he held for over twenty years.

His initiatives to liven up the life of the town, which was then rather sleepy despite the large summer influx of people into the approximately thirty hotels and as many existing bed and breakfasts, were countless and original.

There is no theater, or rather there is only a narrow summer arena called Santarelli from the name of its Pescia owner, and so Napoleon organizes one, the Teatro delle Varietà in the garden of La Locanda Maggiore, with dancers and magicians, but also with opera billboards.

The season ends with the summer, and so he promotes an agreement with the Ministries, and in September and October Montecatini is crowded with civil servants of the Kingdom, hosted at the Locanda and treated at the Spa with only six lire all inclusive.

There is no electric light, he introduces it in the 200 rooms of his hotel and in the theater, but also at his own expense on the Viale del Tettuccio, not yet Verdi.

He organizes lunches and dinners with expert menus for every occasion, in which he hosts Grocco and Casciani, Verdi and Baragiola, Simoncini and Fedeli.

Montecatini lacked a newspaper that would pique the curiosity of its guests with news from the spa, and he founded one, the Tettuccio, later Corriere dei Bagni, where the names of the guests, illustrious or lesser-known, of the Montecatini hotels were listed along with gossip and cartoons.

The funicular arrived in Montecatini Alto in 1898, and Napoleon immediately set up a restaurant there, the Chalet Melani, made of wood, which became an attraction for the Castle and which also hosted Verdi (only to burn down completely in 1904, probably following a malicious act).

The Grotta Giusti fascinated Verdi, who advised him to take over its management, and he threw himself headlong into this other operation as well.

And then Melani managed, with his brothers Vittorio and Jacopo, the restaurants of many Italian railway stations, traded in wine, sparkling wine, cognac, and bottled and shipped the thermal water of the state property.

His massive and good-natured figure, the eternal half cigar in his mouth are now part of the Montecatini panorama.
Tamagno and Fregoli and an infinite number of deputies and senators of the Kingdom descend at the Locanda Maggiore. But something begins to change, especially after the powerful Milanese company of the Grandi Alberghi Spatz and Suardi arrives in Montecatini at the beginning of the century, which buys the Grand Hotel La Pace, and then, in 1904, also the management of the Locanda Maggiore.

Melani begins to fall out of love, a project to create an imposing hotel in Montecatini Alto is rejected on the pretext of a dangerous displacement of the walls.

Then he throws himself into other initiatives outside Montecatini, first managing the Terme di Porretta after a failure, then those of San Giuliano, instilling great hope and expectations everywhere. He continued to run the Globo Restaurant and Hotel in Pistoia, the city where he was born and where he died at the age of 59 in 1917.

The newly formed Municipality of Bagni di Montecatini had granted him honorary citizenship in 1908, perhaps to repair the disagreements of recent times. His son, the lawyer Raffaello, attended the celebratory lunch. Napoleone would return a few times to nostalgically see his Locanda, which he had enlarged and embellished over the course of twenty years, always welcomed by old and new guests like a dear friend, whom everyone misses for his innate generosity and affability.

The bust of Cav. N. Melani stands out, together with those of the Architect Giulio Bernardini and Dr. Gino Merlini, on the first floor of the Palazzo Comunale, to the left of the staircase, to testify to the importance of this figure for the city.