Hotel Villa Schuler

Three Generations of One Family, Since 1886

Eugen Schuler, a German jeweler and antiques dealer, built this white stucco house on Piazzetta Bastione in 1886, with shop space on the ground floor and balconies looking out over the bay. After his death in 1905, his widow Anna turned the family home into a guesthouse, and the Schulers have run it ever since, bar two forced interruptions: the villa was confiscated during both world wars and only returned to the family in 1953. Marta Schuler, a nurse who had married into the family, reopened it as a fourteen-room hotel in the 1950s, and three generations later it has grown to thirty-two rooms without leaving family hands. Few addresses in Taormina can point to a history this continuous, confiscations included.

Why It Works

We kept this hotel for a history that's documented rather than claimed: a named founder, a confiscation and return on record, and a family that has run the house through every decade since. The garden, described in a travel account as far back as 1908, and the terrace view over Etna and the bay, are exactly as they were when Taormina first became a destination — not a modern recreation of that era, but a continuation of it. That continuity is rarer than any single amenity on the list.

Why This Location

Piazzetta Bastione sits just off Via Roma, a short, level walk from Corso Umberto and the old town's main promenade, on the quieter northern edge of central Taormina. The Giardino Pubblico, the town's public gardens, is close by, and the terrace's own view takes in the Bay of Giardini-Naxos and Mount Etna without needing to leave the property. It is a position that trades the very centre of Corso Umberto's bustle for a few minutes' more space and quiet, which the garden and terrace make worthwhile.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: family-run historic villa, botanical garden, belle époque character

• Rooms: 32, modernised, family-owned across three generations

• Best For: travellers who want Taormina's grand-hotel history carried by a family rather than a brand

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the botanical garden, documented since at least 1908

• Dining: breakfast room hung with a 1920s portrait by German painter August Bresgen

• Amenities: roof garden, palm terrace, botanical garden, parking on site, beach access arranged

• Attractions: Corso Umberto (short walk), Giardino Pubblico (nearby), Bay of Giardini-Naxos and Mount Etna (terrace view)

The Garden and the Terrace

The garden is the house's real signature: palms, roses and a grape pergola first described by a travel writer in 1908, kept largely as it was rather than redesigned for a modern eye. The terrace built above it looks across the bay to Giardini-Naxos on one side and up to Etna on the other, a view the hotel has owned since long before Taormina's grander names arrived. A 1938 extension added further balconies, later altered during the British requisition of the building, a detail the family still points to as part of the house's layered history rather than hiding it. Guests take breakfast and evening drinks on the same terrace, which does most of the work other hotels ask a pool deck to do.

Before You Book

Thirty-two rooms spread across a villa built up over more than a century means room sizes and outlooks vary more than at a purpose-built hotel, so travellers chasing a specific garden or bay view are better off asking directly at booking. The hotel's own parking is a genuine convenience in a town where most addresses send guests to a public lot. Breakfast is served beneath the Bresgen portrait each morning, a fixed ritual worth timing an early excursion around rather than skipping, and the family's long tenure means staff often know the town's quieter corners better than a generic concierge desk would.