I don’t think I would stay at Villa Feltrinelli on Lake Garda. Now I am not being critical of the hotel: I am being critical of the strange review written by Laura Landro in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. [You may ask why I reading a review of a hotel in Italy when I have no plans to go to Italy, and suggest that I get a life. I will not stoop to answer that question.]
According to Landro:
1. Rates start at about $1700 per night through September.
2. Rose petals are sprinkled in the toilet.
3. They open champagne bottles with a sword.
4. This is the building where Mussolini was kept prisoner before his execution (Landra calls it his ‘death’).
5. It is a two hour drive from the airport.
6. Some rooms have a view looking over the front driveway.
7. The ‘junior suite’ was a single (albeit it, very nicely furnished) room
8. They looked at an actual suite in a separate building and found it “wasn’t as nicely furnished and felt dark and a bit isolated”.
9. The lakeside boat house room goes for $6,170 per night.
10. There isn’t much to do there, but you get a kayak. And there is tennis and golf nearby (not on site).
11. They hiked in the hills “but the map provided by the hotel was hard to follow” and they wound up at a construction site by mistake and had to come back walking along a main road with trucks and cars zooming by.
12. The young wait staff was anxious to talk about Italian soccer teams.
They also said that the hotel public rooms were beautiful, they liked the food (including the edible flowers for dessert) and you could get a massage poolside.
But items 1-12 took about about 75% of the article. At least.
What grade did Landro give Villa Feltrinelli? An A+.
Huh?
Arthur Thinks (He Thinks) 
I have actually been to the Villa Feltrinelli…both before and after the conversion to millionaire hotel. It is a fabulous property. Guests want for nothing. Everything is done in the best taste and with the best available.
However, it is in direct contrast to the neighboring town which is small and simple and host to the summer courses for foreigners given by the University of Milan.
The Villa Feltrinelli is designed for guests who do not want to do anything but be catered to. It affords privacy (it is a gated property that is only open to guests). It affords luxury. It affords the ‘dolce far niente’. It is not designed for the general traveller.
I visited the Villa in order to review it for a travel article but declined a dinner invitation because (1) I did not want to be accussed of not being totally unbiased and (2) I did not have the wardrobe or attitude required to be at the Villa.
Many, many years earlier, when I was a student at the summer courses, we would avail ourselves of the beach which we called ‘Mussolini Beach’ in ‘honor’ of the former resident. The property had been returned to the Feltrinelli Family but they were not in residence.
Some very helpful information for me as i am planning a trip to italy this year.