Arabs grab the Grand Hotel

Arabs grab the Grand Hotel
Palermo (gro)  Richard Wagner made his “Parsival“, his last major musical-dramatic work, stars and starlets have been hosted by the luxurious house as well as generals and politicians, and in 1957 it hosted the mythical Mafia Conference of the Cosa Nostra with the capi from New York and Palermo, where the international markets for the illegal trade in drugs were divided up. It’s about the Grand Hotel et des Palmes in via Roma in the center of Palermo. At first it was said that it would be closed, but now there is talk that Arab investors are interested in the Grand Hotel. Currently, the house lures with bargain prices for Sicily travelers.

“Save my Hotel delle Palme”

The local edition of the “Repubblica” has now published a heartbreaking letter from Toti Librizzi, former bar man of the the Palme. Librizzi has long since retired, but the shocking news about “his Hotel delle Palme” is literally driving the man who for 40 years tended to guests in the luxurious hostel’s bar and delighted them with sophisticated cocktails  into the street. “He drives half of Palermo crazy,” say his friends and acquaintances, and he has plenty of them. Librizzi’s pleading battle cry is “Save my Hotel delle Palme!”

An institution of the island metropolis.

Built in the “Romanesque style” by architect Ernesto Basile, the Grand Hotel at via Roma No. 398 is an institution. The luxurious house, which opened in 1874, has a guestbook signed not only by Mafiosi and politicians, but also by world-famous artists such as the painters Renato Guttuso or Giorgio de Chrico, the filmmaker Peppuccio Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”) or actors like Ben Gazzara, Vittorio Gassmann, al Pacino or Richard Burton, but also personalities like the philosopher and poet Umberto Eco, theater people like Dario Fo or musicians like Astor Piazolla, who pointed out in his entry that he was at home in his Argentine homeland, Buenos Aires, in the “Palermo district.” Toti Librizzi served and catered to most of them during his 40-year “tenure” as a barman.

Roman investment company.

The Grand Hotel is owned by a Roman investment company called Acqua Marcia. The owns two other luxury hotels in Palermo: the Hotel Villa Igea, operated by the Hilton Group, and the     “Excelsior”. In Taormina, the Roman group owns perhaps the most beautiful hotel in the world, the San Domenico, in Catania another “Excelsior” and in Syracuse the “Hotel des Etrangeres”. Throughout, these are houses that are operated with a high level of personnel. But that is set to change. Modernization and staff reductions are now on the agenda. And after that, the investor group wants to make cash. Negotiations are already underway with Arab funds.