This large room is situated in the heart of the building and is dedicated to the figure of the podestà, the castellan who represented the military-political power and authority.
He ruled crossbowmen and sergeants and guarded the castle situated close to the hotel. From this important and strategic fortress he controlled all the underlying Magra Valley.
The room is named after “Del Campo” square situated in front of the church of Vezzano basso, at only few meters from the hotel, and dedicated to San Sebastiano between 1602 and 1620.
The church was built in the place named “Del Campo” on the underlying path of the ancient and disappeared castle.
The room is dedicated to this famous poet and his love for the sea. During his short but adventurous life, like other romantic poets of the period, he often stayed in the enchanting Gulf of the Poets.
A plaque says that in order to fully enjoy the beauty of the landscape Lord George Byron used to swim for 8 kilometers from Portovenere to Lerici, the two edges of the Gulf of La Spezia.
The name of this room recalls the underlying old path marked by frequent religious processions to the parish church which stood on a little hill in Bottagna. That was a place where village people could meet and pray but over time it was abandoned.
The Corongiola church is mentioned in a paper from Pope Innocenzo III to the Bishop of Luni where he confirms to the prelate all the parishes of his diocese.
The building, dating back to the early XVI century, has always represented the “heart” of Vezzano basso and once it also housed a police station.
The present room was once used as a cell for wrongdoers, chicken thieves and drunkards. A man of Vezzano, Mario nicknamed “the cat”, was shut into this cell because he kidnapped Angelina, a young girl from the Maggiore Lake, with whom he was madly in love. He was imprisoned but…. shortly after they married!
The room retains the master window once closed and the two air vents with sturdy bars which were once the only “outlet” for its “guests”.
This room is so called because it was the place where once the civil rules were decided and then declared in the public square.
It was a very safe and peaceful place similar to the one where the statutes were stored. The statutes were like sacred texts, symbols of the local freedom.
Vezzano’s statutes were – together with those of the nearby Sarzana – the most organized of the Lunigiana and could well regulate the administrative local life until the Napoleonic age.
Thanks to a study done by the University of Genoa on the occasion of the Colombiadi, it was found that in August 1492 a sailor named Giovanni “Da Vezzano” (to specify his native origins) sailed from Palos together with Christopher Columbus on the Pinta caravel.
This room is dedicated to him and to the ancestral seafaring virtues of our people, that contributed to the change of the whole world.
This room is named Sea Room for its decor, really recovered from Liguria sandy shores or from the small markets of the coast. The room boasts a little terrace facing the Pentagonal Tower and the underlying little deconsecrated church, nowadays used on Friday evenings by the village musical band. Sometimes you can hear their pleasant notes in the stillness of the village.
Sometimes in this north facing room it is possible to hear, depending on the wind, the tolls of the bell tower of the adjoining church of Santa Maria Assunta and those of the one of the Sanctuary of Nostra Signora del Sorriso in Vezzano alto.
This large room boasts a beamed ceiling (original of the XVI century), a fireplace and two corner windows looking the side entrance of the S. Maria Assunta Church. It is said that here stayed both Paolo Emilio and Ludovico Zacchia, bishops and then cardinals of Montefiascone (XVI century).
Here stayed quite certainly also Giovanni Battista de Nobili, who obtained the Genoese citizenship in 1528. He then took up a political career and therefore was named “Republic’s Toga”. These people belonging to different ages took care of adorning the village: they commissioned to workers from Carrara splendid polychrome altars for S. Sebastiano Church in Vezzano alto.
This room overlooks the same name square where the hotel is located and where on the third Sunday of September occurs the “Grapes Festival”. During this event people divide into different districts and face each other to many ability competitions in order to win the coveted “palio”.