Sicilian Sizzle: Updates from Verdura Resort, A Rocco Forte Hotel
Picture this: Over 550 acres of tangled olive trees, fragrant citrus, and pristine coastline bordering the Mediterranean along Sicily's sun-drenched southwest coast. Welcome to Verdura Resort, a Rocco Forte Hotel. The Rocco Forte Hotels team is famed for their detail-oriented city hotels in locations like Rome and London, and in fact, Verdura is their only resort property. But the brand doesn’t do anything by halves, so travelers looking for a place to really unwind are going to struggle to find anything missing from the experience here - this is a true resort in the European style, somewhere to bring the whole family, a place where you can turn your brain off at the door and just enjoy. It’s secluded, private, comprehensive, and programmed with something for everybody in the group. This is a place for sunsets, pool days, and practicing your swing - and if you decide you need a little cultural immersion, world-class archeological sites and landscapes with literary and mythological ties are reachable by an easy drive.
While always a favorite for a true Italian beach resort experience, when Verdura reopened for the 2025 season, it debuted refreshments across its main buildings and dining outlets, as well as an even plumper brochure of activity offerings. Consider it a polishing of its reputation as a perfect pairing with the cultural hubs of Palermo or Taormina, or as a spot to unwind after exploring European cities that are slightly further afield (there are easy non-stop flights into Palermo from Rome, Naples, Athens, Paris, Barcelona, and even from both Newark to Palermo on United and JFK to Catania on Delta.) We love Rocco Forte’s unique combination of whimsical design and reverence for hotels’ surroundings, and at Verdura, there’s a lot of beauty to revere (and a lot of ways to do it). Read on for updates on our favorite Sicilian escape.
During the resort’s seasonal winter closure, interior designers Paolo Moschino, Philip Vergeylen, and Rocco Forte Director of Design Olga Polizzi worked with the team to refresh the central building, where floor to ceiling windows in the lobby remind you on arrival that you’re here for the Sicilian sunshine. There is also a new piazza alongside the 16th-century Saracen Tower that takes pride of place on the property (these towers, which dot the coast of the Tyrrhenian, were used to spot Ottoman ships and give defenseless populations time to escape.) Today, the area takes on a less dramatic - but no less vital - purpose, with a shopping area and Japanese-Sicilian restaurant called Nagori, which combines sushi techniques seafood caught just off the Mediterranean coast.
The resort is a favorite playground of Rocco Forte’s Creative Director of Food, Fulvio Pierangelini, and three new restaurants plus a new cocktail bar bring the total number of food and beverage options on property to eight. Many of the restaurants have terraces or outdoor spaces - after all, Sicily does get an average of 350 days of sun per year - and the name of the game here is long, leisurely meals. Liolà offers a pizza oven and clifftop outdoor terrace, and there’s fresh granita on the breakfast menu at Buongiorno. Vibrant pastas and crisp local wines can be found on the menus at the brand-new L’Osteria and the elevated Zagara, which is inspired by a magical garden, and where Pierangelini’s reverence for local ingredients is on display in plates like linguine with Sciacca shrimp and sea scallops with burrata cream and black truffle. If you’re looking to shake things up, Ondina serves lunchtime burgers and Nicoise salads. Open-fire cooking sits alongside fresh crudos at beachfront Amare, and we’d definitely recommend a nightcap at stylish Scirocco Bar, where the walls are the color of a Sicilian sunset and the mixologists shake up cocktails using ingredients from the resort’s Verdura farm, surrounding land, and the sea.
The resort’s 203 rooms and suites are arranged in low-slung buildings that step down toward the sea, each with its own outdoor space, sunny accents, and a breezy canopy overhanging the bed. Travelers looking for more space are also well-served within the resort, as there are 20 Rocco Forte Private Villas, with three and four bedrooms, on offer as well, with hilltop vantage points, indoor-outdoor layouts, and private pools. Both hotel and villa guests have access to the full slate of resort amenities and facilities, which will include new sports academies for 2025.
Expert-led sessions in golf, yoga, and tennis, alongside soccer training with world champion Gianluca Zambrotta will fill the calendar this summer, and kids are invited to join in, with accommodations for all experience levels. In addition to soccer (Juventus will also host an academy from August 11-17), tennis, basketball (Bruno Cerella will be on property form July 1-6), golf, yoga, rhythmic gymnastics, and even Krav Maga, teenagers can also enjoy skateboarding (Italian champion Augustin Aquila is slated to bring in his expertise in from August 11-17), chess, frisbee, and a DJ Academy, and the omnipresent pickleball finally arrives at Verdura for the first time. For even littler ones, there’s a kids club with two pools and specially-designed programming. Worn out by all the action? Of course there’s a 40,000 square foot Irene Forte spa that shouldn’t be missed (not that you intended to skip out without a treatment!)
Guests who are interested in exploring the surrounding countryside can head out into the 3,700 acres of natural preserve on horseback, mountain bike, by quad, or on the miles of scenic trails toward the dramatic cliffs. Take on a riding adventure through forests and across rivers, led by Sicilian cowgirl, or follow an e-bike route from the resort to Heraclea Minoa, a place where legend tells of the epic battle between Eryx and Hercules. A little bit farther afield, Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples is less than an hour’s drive - the 1,300 acre UNESCO World Heritage Site once housed the ancient city of Akragas. It’s an ancient Greek archeological complex with ruins of seven majestic temples dating back to the 5th century BC, and temples are dedicated to Hera, Juno, Apollo, and Zeus; the world-famous Temple of Concordia is one of the best-preserved ancient Greek temples in existence.
Finally, this is a place for the golfers in your life (Sam Temlett of Golf Monthly has called Verdura “perhaps the best golf and leisure resort I’ve ever visited.”) The resort’s three courses (two with 18 holes and one with nine) have been honored by the Italian Golf Federation with two prestigious Impegnati nel Verde awards, recognizing excellence in both the Biodiversity and Historical, Artistic, and Cultural Heritage categories, and the resort’s Golf Development Manager Donato di Ponziano will lead master classes from May 15-19 and September 18-22.
Phew… we’re out of breath after all of that. Thankfully, summer in Sicily is calling!
