Palazzo di Varignana

Palazzo di Varignana is a vast property (over 600 acres) with private villas to rent along with individual rooms. It is in a remote area, with no access to a town where your could walk for incidentals or to shop or eat out. I was battling a terrible cough when we arrived. The property does not have a concierge to help with all our questions as the staff is not knowledgeable. There is no small store to purchase needed supplies like cough drops/headache medicine/water/sodas/snacks. Having a car is a MUST. Unfortunately we did not but hired a driver to take us each day for wine tasting, balsamic tasting, etc. The spa area is very nice, having been October we did not use any outdoor pools. Indoor spa/pool was very nicely done. I would rank my Swedish massage I would rate as a 5 but the sauna area, cold shower area was top notch. Now to our room....At check-in (as most have said in these reviews) the staff was extremely vague about how to maneuver around this vast property. they advised us to download their App and we would see better detail....well this App was absolutely useless...just showing the trails to walk. The television in our room had highlights of the spa/restaurants/trails but again no detail on how to get to each place. We asked for a map and they gave us an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper with the entire property shown in a font size that needed a magnifying glass to read. We laughed and said we needed a bigger map but were told that was all they had!!! About all you could make out on this map was the immense walking trails...any details of the rooms/spa/restaurants were impossible to read. When the staff tried to show us, on this microscopic map, how to get to our room we gave up and said we would need help....Wow was that a good choice. These corridors of 8 rooms each are tiered down a hillside. From the front desk we ventured outside, headed across the street to an elevator that was not attached to any building. We got inside, pressed #5 and down we headed to what seemed like a bunker when the doors opened, with a long sterile hallway made from concrete, (soundproof inside) with steel and marble staircases that went up to more floors with NO people on them (we never passed a human in 3 days down there). It became our joke that no one would find us down here for days, until a housekeeper arrived. Spooky! Now our room was amazing, a bit cold feeling but huge, modern, with a expansive deck looking out to the beautiful scenery. Nice large bathroom. This resort really emphasizes wellness and the environment however my first shock was in the shower. There were no environmental friendly soap dispensers on the wall....all the hotels we visited throughout Italy all had the re-fillable containers with body wash/shampoo/conditioner...but this "environmentally conscience" property is still using 1 ounce, plastic bottles of these three products! I was very upset to see such a huge property behind the times. All I could think on our 4 days here was all the plastic wasted on hundreds of rooms. Restaurants, II Grifone (located inside Vila at top of property) was a 5 star dinner. Our Maître d' was fabulous as was his young assistant. He shared his history of working in some of the finest restaurants around the world. Excellent service, excellent food. Treno Reale is a train car from the 1800's. Beautifully decorated with velvet curtains, painted ceilings.... a step back in time to the Orient Express. Our dinner began at 8:30pm and ended at midnight! Much, much too late to be eating at that hour. Many guests felt the same way. Each dish was a work of art, but not a menu I enjoyed. Too many fish dishes with no other options since it is a fixed price. Would not recommend. The staff has to prepare the food in another building away from the train car and drinks are made in a bar far from the train...we were told it would take 10-15 minutes to receive an alcohol drink other then wine. It took 15-18 minuets. Le Marzoline...this restaurant is more on the casual side, but located far away from the main part of the property. We decided to walk (we could have had the lobby bring us in a golf cart). Our dinner was very good but our waitress made the evening. She was from Hungary and had a wonderful, funny and playful personality. The signage on the roads would name a restaurant but didn't show you which direction to go. Finding the the 1800's train car was impossible! We finally had the front desk shuttle us to it. Also Le Marzoline restaurant is a good 20-30 minute walk and you might think twice about walking back in the dark if you have been drinking. Again, do not stay here without your own transportation unless you do not plan on leaving.

Beautiful, beautiful Italy, we were here for an automobile weekend, and Bologna and Varignana are indeed beautiful locations. We were test driving a car for the weekend at the invitation of a local car manufacturer and our stay was partly paid for by them. Sadly we were unable to do much driving as we were so exhausted from sleep deprivation. Our room appeared decent enough with a lovely balcony, however our main issue was the air conditioning and temperature control. We also had issues with a faulty coffee machine and a leaking shower. On our first night the balcony doors were blown open by strong winds, however we later realised that the doors had not been locked properly. On checking in, reception gave us no information about the hotel, instead directed us to the TV for further information. Sadly this was all in Italian so we ended up just using the website. After our first night the display on the room phone stated that the room was unoccupied and it was apparent that the hotel had not understood that there were two consecutive bookings for the room, one from ourselves and the second by the car manufacturer. The fact that the hotel never mentioned the car manufacturer to us once was an indication that they hadn't processed the booking correctly and why we had to twice speak with reception after our first night to correct the room card authorisation for the duration of our stay. We had tried over a couple of days, late night and early hours, to get staff to sort out the air conditioning, which we were unable to control from our room. The room was so hot! We were told that this would be done remotely via reception. This did not happen. After a couple of sleepness nights we complained to management, who totally accepted fault and liability, specifically that the two consecutive room bookings had not been properly recognised, that the hotel had been experiencing issues with their systems and consequently were struggling to control air conditioning and room temperature, and that her team had not communicated any of our issues to her during our stay. With one night left the manager had the temperature of the room adjusted, replaced the coffee machine and had the shower re-sealed. She offered to move us to another room, an upgraded room, however we declined as we did not want to move all of our clothes and belongings with literally hours left of our stay. In light of the fact that we were only in Italy at the invitation of the car manufacturer to test drive one of their cars, and that our ability to do so was limited by the fatigue directly caused by the hotel's failings, we felt that we were clearly due compensation and expected our final bill to be appropriately adjusted. The manager gave us a bottle of olive oil (!) which was gratefully received, but told us she was unable to authorise compensation and claimed she could not get hold of her supervisor. We have never heard of a hotel where a manager is unable to authorise compensation! Frankly we sensed she was more interested in going home than dealing with this situation, however she said she would keep us updated until her shift ended. As we expected she failed to do so. On check out her colleague called her at home for an update and she informed him that a director had rejected any compensation. Her colleague seemed quite perplexed himself! Frankly we felt our stay should have been fully compensated but on checkout we generously decided to authorise two thirds of our bill to be charged. The staff member on reception told us that management would just charge the remaining balance to our credit card whether we authorised it or not. On return home we discovered this was the case, and that the balance had almost immediately been charged. We have now informed the car manufacturer and will be disputing the charge with our credit card company. For the purposes of balance, we visited two of the hotel's restaurants, Aureva and Le Marzoline. In stark contrast to the rest of our experience, the service at both was exemplary as was the food. The pool area was an odd experience. Firstly we had to sign in at the spa to get our towels and then travel up three floors to get to the pool area. Nobody was interested in greeting us or helping us with the beds. We immediately realised we needed more towels, and were told we had to go all the way back to reception ourselves to go and get them! For the duration of our time at the pool no member of staff approached us for drinks or food, nothing! Just very odd! Also felt it was odd that the hotel only give you water on the first night. Lastly the hotel have their own app which you can download and use to do walks and bike rides. We did a couple of the walks, the amphitheatre walk which was beautiful, and we also tried the arboreo walk, however this path was more difficult to follow as the app didn't work quite as well here. There was also an art walk which was interesting. In summary, it is a beautiful location, but the service is poor and there is little accountability from management. The car manufacturer actually offered us two different hotel options and we truly regret choosing Palazzo di Varignana over Grand Hotel Majestic Baglioni.