Sky Arte's 'Ghost Hotel' explores 20th-century icons through their hotel rooms

Sky Arte is launching 'Ghost Hotel', a series written by Michela Murgia, Donato Dallavalle, and Valentina Pattavina, premiering Tuesday, January 18. The show is set in a mysterious hotel where Murgia, playing a courageous hotel porter—a job she actually held before her success with 'Accabadora' (Campiello Prize 2010)—searches for traces left by six key 20th-century figures: Truman Capote, Palma Bucarelli, Mata Hari, Anaïs Nin, Nikola Tesla, and Kiki de Montparnasse. Each episode delves into their stories, passions, and failures, focusing on lesser-known aspects. The first episode examines Truman Capote at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans, where he claimed to have been born—likely one of his literary inventions. Capote was a shy yet worldly writer, author of novels, stories, and reports infused with his chameleon personality. He transformed into the precious jester of 1960s New York salons, later becoming a tragic wreck of a modern myth. The second episode features Mata Hari, born Margaretha Zelle in the Netherlands, who reinvented herself in Belle Époque Paris as an exotic dancer and courtesan. During World War I, she was accused of espionage, captured, and executed by French intelligence, though doubts persist whether she was a spy or a woman too independent for patriarchal society. The series airs on Sky Arte, whose website is powered by Artribune.