The house · 1911 to today
Built to watch the harbour.
Why Verrane
We restored the house the slow way: stone by stone, shutter by shutter, keeping anything that still worked and repairing anything that nearly did.
1911
The customs house
Built by the port authority to watch the harbour. Every room faces the water because every room was once an office with a job to do.
1962
The Verrane family
Anna and Piero Verrane bought the house at auction, opened eight rooms and a dining room, and ran them for fifty years. The lemon cake is hers.
2019
Stone by stone
Eighty-four pairs of shutters were numbered, taken down, repaired by hand and rehung in their own windows. The oak floors were sanded, never replaced.
Today
Fourteen rooms
One kitchen, one terrace, a jetty thirty-eight steps down, and a front desk that is open from seven until eleven.
What we kept
The house, counted.
84
pairs of original shutters, rehung
312
square metres of 1911 oak floor
1
stone stair, worn by a century of guests
0
rooms without a window that opens
Who looks after you
Nine people, most of them from within a mile of the harbour.
Elena Varri
Front desk. Knows every boat and path in town.
Aurelio Denti
Chef. Writes the menu at five, after the quay.
Luca Brandi
Wine and the roof bar. Ask him about Rossese.
Marta Bellandi
Olive oil, eggs and the harvest walk.
Tullio Rossi
The boat to the caves, since 1994.
Sara Ferro
Every plate and cup, forty metres up the lane.
Giulia Onde
Housekeeping. The linen dried on the roof is her idea.
Nino Carta
Maintenance, shutters and the sauna fire.
Care, not claims
Rain in the cistern, sun on the roof, food from the hill.
Rainwater from the roof fills the 1911 cistern and waters the garden. Panels on the signal-room roof make a third of our electricity.
Eighty per cent of what the kitchen cooks comes from within twenty kilometres, most of it from families we know by name.
Written about us
“A small hotel that behaves like a good host: it notices, then leaves you alone.”
Onde Quarterly, 2025
“The shutters alone are worth the trip.”
Harbour & Hill, 2024
“Breakfast until half past eleven should be a human right.”
Molo Magazine, 2026