There are certain colours that act as a visual shorthand for brands: orange for Hermès, robin’s-egg blue for Tiffany & Co., yellow and white (stripes) for Il Pellicano, the fabled hotel on the ruggedly beautiful peninsula of Monte Argentario in Tuscany. Set amidst the pristine natural landscape, where privacy is protected by a maze of cypresses, olive trees, oleander, bougainvillea, rosemary, and lavender, Il Pellicano taps into our collective nostalgia with its perfect alchemy of timeless glamour and revelrous vibe.

“Pelli,” as it is affectionately called, was built in the 1960s as a romantic hideaway by an Anglo-American couple, Patricia and Michael Graham. She was “an American socialite and he a British aviator,” so the story goes, and the intent was to recreate a glamorous house party, filling the property with friends and friends-of-friends who visited year after year to live la dolce vita. Roberto Sciò was a repeated guest and is the current owner of the property, which he acquired in 1979. The list of those who have stayed at Il Pellicano is a who’s who of celebrities, socialites, and royalty, and the chronicler of the jet set, Slim Aarons, immortalized the hotel in photographs he took of the property in the 1980s. And while Il Pellicano’s legend has endured, it is Marie-Louise Sciò, Roberto’s daughter, who has been instrumental in ushering the hotel into the modern day.

Marie-Louise spent much of her childhood at Il Pellicano, but while her peers passed their summers at beach clubs, she stayed behind, observing from “behind the bush and looking at this fabulous world of elegance and chicness,” the not-yet-50 Sciò says now. “It was like watching a movie in some way.” And although she has enough anecdotes to fill a multivolume diary, it is a specific story from when she was around eight that reveals the entrepreneurial spirit she had from a young age. “I was a massive Madonna fan, and she was going on tour in Torino, and I asked my father if I could go, and he said ‘absolutely not,’ ” Sciò recalls. “At the time, one of the hotel bungalows was our house, and I memorized the whole Who’s That Girl World Tour by heart—watching it over and over and over on the VHS recording. And then for the entire summer, I would knock at the doors of guests and say, ‘Can I perform a Madonna concert?’ And being a kid, they wouldn’t say no. But I would ask to be paid.”

By the early 2000s, Sciò had graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied architecture, so her father asked her to redo one of the rooms at Il Pellicano. What began with a bathroom project evolved into freshening up the entire property. The hotel, however, maintains its original bones, with rooms and suites in the main villa and private bungalows set in the mature Mediterranean gardens. Some have sea views, while others overlook the gardens. All have some kind of balcony or terrace. The decor is Tuscan seaside—white and terra cotta with pops of yellow—retro glamour and casual Italian chic, a complementary mix of tradition and modernity. Beds are made up with crisp white linen, and bathrooms are finished in marble. As for those yellow and white stripes, “I was looking at all of the touchpoints, basically what a client would see,” Sciò says of her redesign. She looked down at the beach from the clifftop vantage point overlooking the sea, noticed that the towels were a boring beige, and thought, “Let’s put something joyful and fun, yellow and sun. Very simple, no deep concept, but it was really about let’s bring some sunshine and joy.”

Marie-Louise Sciò, CEO and creative director of Pellicano Hotels Group, has been instrumental in ushering Il Pellicano into the modern day.

That sounds rather simplistic, but Sciò has an innate sense of style, undoubtedly fostered by living surrounded by beauty as opposed to looking out at it. Even the deep-green rosemary bushes that proliferate on the property are neatly shaped. Il Pellicano is very much about well-considered but understated charm, a recipe of old-world manners that cannot be replicated but comes with years of trained discretion while welcoming famous faces.

Sciò’s involvement in every detail goes as far as selecting the font for the menus at both Pelligrill, the al fresco dining locale for guests in residence and the yachters from Porto Ercole visiting for lunch, and Il Pellicano, the Michelin-starred restaurant helmed by Michelino Gioia, who puts his creative spin on Tuscan and Italian dishes and has curated a celebrated wine list.

In her role as CEO and creative director of Pellicano Hotels Group, Sciò oversees a family of hotels that includes Il Pellicano, La Posta Vecchia—a 17th-century villa outside Rome that was her family’s private residence before being converted into a hotel—and the Mezzatorre in Ischia. She has evolved the hotel group into a lifestyle brand with Issimo, an e-commerce platform dedicated to the best of Italian design, travel, food, and style. “It’s a cabinet of Italian excellence,” she says of Issimo, which has a reach in over 90 countries. “There are so many aspects to hotels—people, style, recipes, traditions—and this has broadened awareness of the hotel.”

A recent partnership with Aermont Capital means Sciò is set to add more hotels to the Pellicano Hotels portfolio. “It takes a long time to find and buy the right hotel,” she says—mentioning that she is eyeing properties within Italy. “I’m growing older, so I’m more patient, but I get very excited about a place I see potential in. I wish this next phase was a faster process.” (La Suvera will be the next Pellicano Hotels Group property, expected to welcome its first guests in 2027.)

Sciò spends a lot of time at Il Pellicano, and while, she notes, “we have a great following of people that come year in and year out,” the typical guest has changed over the years. “They’re getting younger,” she says of the new class of travellers who “spend less time at the properties”: on average a couple of days compared to previous generations, who would stay for weeks at a time. And as the business card that is social media promotes Il Pellicano to this younger set, Sciò, the ultimate hostess, knows how to read the room to ensure that one of the world’s last truly glamorous hotels will continue its nuanced hospitality.

Marie-Louise Sciò’s portrait photo by Roberta Krasnig. Photographs courtesy of Il Pellicano.

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