Palazzo Versace Macau
The Italian fashion house's first Asian hotel: 271 rooms of mosaic, terrazzo and Versace Home furnishings in a tower of Grand Lisboa Palace Resort, Cotai.
- Neighbourhood
- Cotai
- Status
- Open
- Design
- Interiors under the creative direction of Donatella Versace; mosaics by Fantini Mosaici
Why we recommend it
Nothing here is understated, and that is the point. The hotel is a complete Versace interior, from the mosaic and terrazzo of the public areas to the textiles, tableware and lighting in the rooms. Travellers who like the house will not find it done more thoroughly in Asia, and the craftsmanship, much of it carried out by Italian workshops, bears close inspection.
With 271 rooms it is also far smaller than most Cotai hotels, and it shares a resort with The Karl Lagerfeld Macau, the neighbouring tower designed by the late couturier, which makes Grand Lisboa Palace a place to compare two fashion houses as hoteliers. The third tower is Grand Lisboa Palace Macau, the resort’s main hotel.
For the opening, see our report on Palazzo Versace Macau opening at Grand Lisboa Palace; for how it sits among its neighbours, OKYTO’s guide to Cotai’s Zaha Hadid, Versace and Lagerfeld towers.
Rooms & Suites
Rooms begin with the Deluxe Versace Room, of 55 to 60 square metres, and the Premier Versace Room, of 65, with views of the city or the resort’s garden. The Grand Suite measures 70 square metres and the Signature Suite between 76 and 87. The Grand Suites come in two schemes, one Baroque in bordeaux, black and gold, the other in a Chinese-inspired palette of lilac, peach, orange and pale blue.
The Imperial Suite, on the highest guest floor, runs to 350 square metres, with two bedrooms, living and dining rooms, a massage room and a media room. Throughout, the furniture, linens and upholstery are made for the hotel, combining the Versace Home collection with oriental elements, and the tableware is Versace’s own.
Dining
Dining is Italian. Don Alfonso 1890, the restaurant of the Iaccarino family from the Sorrento peninsula, serves the cooking of that coast and of Amalfi, developed with the chef Ernesto Iaccarino and supplied in part from the family’s farm at Punta Campanella. Its dining room is floored in Italian terrazzo.
La Scala del Palazzo is the hotel’s salon, for Italian coffee, pastries, house-made chocolates, afternoon tea and aperitivo, all served on Rosenthal meets Versace porcelain.
Design
The design draws on Versace’s Milanese heritage: Italianate patterns, jewel colours, gilding and the house’s Greek key and Medusa emblems, joined by Chinese references, among them a dragon motif that honours Macau. A porte cochère with a mosaic floor leads to a lobby that pays homage to the palazzo in Via Gesù, the house’s home in Milan. Its floor is made of 80,000 enamel mosaic tiles, set by hand by the Milanese firm Fantini Mosaici, showing the Medusa, the Greca border and the Barocco print.
Mosaic is the recurring material. More than 2.5 million marble and glass tiles were used in the spa and its reception alone, where a large chrysanthemum mosaic lies beneath a Lasvit chandelier of amber hand-blown glass. The hotel’s place in the city’s wider collection of statement buildings is discussed in our essay on Macau as an exhibition of hotel architecture.
Wellness & Spa
The spa’s thermal suites include a crystal steam room and a Versace rendition of the Turkish hammam, and its treatments take a Mediterranean line. The health club, on the third level of the tower, has a personal training studio and two pools: a temperature-controlled indoor pool, 27 metres long and lined in Italian glass mosaic, and an outdoor pool with Romanesque cabanas.
Location
Within Grand Lisboa Palace Resort Macau in Cotai, the reclaimed district between Taipa and Coloane where most of Macau’s large resorts stand. The resort itself is described in our article on the opening of Grand Lisboa Palace in Cotai.
- Website
- Official website
