Grand Hotel La Pace

Along with the Locanda Maggiore, another hotel was already famous in Montecatini in the first decade of the 1900s.

It was the Grand Hotel La Pace.

The Locanda della Pace, owned by Amaddio Berti, was founded around 1850 as a simple tavern where wine was served.
At that time, the structure, managed by Berti's son-in-law, a certain Giovanni Biagi, really left much to be desired if two spouses from Modena - the noblewoman Teresina Bianchi and her husband Pietro Bortolotti who stayed for ten days at the Bagni di Montecatini in July 1857 - had to be content with "a clean, but short and very narrow iron bed with a mosquito net..., a bad breakfast of tasteless coffee and milk with slices of bread...", and then again, "a bad lunch with mutton chops..." as the aristocratic lady recounts in her tasty diary.

But already at the beginning of the 20th century the fate of the questionable inn changed.

The arrival of the Spatz and Suardi Company marked a decisive turning point in the evolution of the hotel, increasing its capacity and luxury.

The architect Giulio Bernardini was commissioned to carry out the expansion and renovation project and Galileo Chini was given the task of painting the ceiling of the building's ballroom, where he would later also insert a beautiful glass entrance window.
"The designs of the new building, severe in its lines and imposing, the adaptations and improvements - we read in a magazine of the time - are all due to the architect G. Bernardini, who brought to Montecatini a taste for modernity, beauty of forms and a very valuable adaptation to new needs, without in any way offending the lines of the ancient buildings."

Post works the structure has about 300 bedrooms, a radiator heating system, a perfect sanitary installation, with water closets, vidoirs, hot and cold water sinks in all the rooms each of which has taken care of ventilation through grooves made in the walls and corresponding on the roofs. Equipped with elevators and hoists, the hotel has room windows equipped with a roll-up mosquito net, large gardens, where there are grass tennis courts, garages etc., which surround the various buildings that make up the hotel.

The newspapers of the time echoed the transformation:
"The Grand Hotel La Pace, to which, in addition to the branch it already had, another building was added this year costing the beauty of a million and a half, represents one of the magnificent ornaments of Montecatini. It can be said that precisely for this hotel, magnificent and sumptuous, frequented by the most select society, rich in halls, gardens, shady parks, equipped with rooms furnished with all the comforts and hygiene regulations, sought after for the exquisiteness of its restaurant, favored for the preciousness of its services, Montecatini has put itself in a position to compete with the most reputed establishments abroad.
And speaking of the grandiose hotel, where all the notables of our country, of the homeland, of art, literature, music and also of feminine grace and elegance stop from June to October for the treatment or for a few days' vacation, I willingly recall a man who has already prepared the fortune of this initiative among hoteliers, the director Luigi Melano[1] who gave the Peace the impulse, the movement of a truly modern industry, and did not skimp on activity, nor ingenuity nor the precious experience acquired in the best houses of Italy and especially abroad. And it is almost academic to repeat that a brilliant future smiles on Montecatini: Montecatini no longer needs a future; it is now what it is, that is, the first place of purgation and relief for all our brothers or sick, or restless or tormented...”

A timeless symbol of the spa town, its charm has attracted D’Annunzio, Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy and the Royal Family, Toscanini, Badoglio, Madame Curie, Trilussa, the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson, the Shah of Persia, the Rothschilds, the King of Saudi Arabia Ibn Saud, Ranieri and Grace of Monaco.
The hotel has currently passed to new owners and, in the process of being renovated, is not open to the public. Visible, however, on Corso Roma is the entrance glass window by Galileo Chini.

[1] Pier Luigi Melano was Director of the Grand Hotel La Pace from 1904 to 1943

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