Betty Soldi designs typographic identity for Florence boutique hotel Stella d'Italia

The Stella d'Italia boutique hotel has opened at Via Tornabuoni 7 in Florence, housed in a 16th-century palazzo designed by Giorgio Vasari. The project is led by Matteo Perduca, an hotelier, restaurateur, and creative director who also works in interior design. Florentine calligrapher and designer Betty Soldi created the hotel's visual identity, using a typeface based on Giambattista Bodoni's original 18th-century design. Soldi, who founded her studio in Florence after a long period in London, also conceived the Inksperiences events that blend Renaissance humanism with contemporary elements. The hotel features 24 rooms (including two suites), each dedicated to a different theme of Italianness, from 1950s Italian cinema to historical cartography of Florence, seascapes, and modernist design. Over 500 works—paintings, prints, framed books, textiles, and fresco fragments—are displayed throughout, curated as a continuous narrative. Common spaces include a breakfast salon with 18th-century bucolic frescoes evoking the Grand Tour, a bar salon with a collection of Buon Ricordo plates, and a panoramic loggia overlooking Florence's rooftops and the Bellosguardo hills. The palazzo was formerly home to the noble Corsi family and now houses the Circolo dell'Unione.