Byblos Art Hotel Villa Amista

We had a fantastic stay at the hotel. Outstanding service from the friendly staff, beautiful pool area, fantastic room all in a setting full of art. The shuttle service makes it a perfect hotel to visit Verona. We stayed with two kids who were more than welcome!

This is definitely a unique property. The location is tranquil although the rooms could use more soundproofing. We had a lot of noise in our bedroom. The most appealing aspect for me was the free shuttle which runs to and from Verona. This was most convenient for sightseeing and attending the opera. I did not find the bedrooms comfortable. The staff is lovely-kind, helpful, and most professional. Breakfast was Ok but not particularly of the highest quality. We had a tasty dinner. Thank you to the entire staff.

Beautiful hotel, with fantastic collection of contemporary art. The art collection does not stop in main lobby, it is everywhere, including guest rooms and corridors. A special attraction is the SPA area. Renovated with a lot of taste and love to art. We have also enjoyed fantastic swimming pool outside in the middle of the beautiful garden.

We have been Byblos’s fans for six years, with daily lunches and dinners in both restaurants during our regular stays, and over the years we recommended this place to many friends. We were always happy to pay extra just to eat the best food we could find in this part of Italy, and we never left the hotel to try other places - as if under its spell. It was a magical place. With the recent change of management and of the restaurant chef, we sadly found our favourite hotel in a state of decline. Byblos always set the standard for how modern Italian cuisine should taste: exciting, appetising, creative and, most importantly, fresh. The previous chef, Mattia Bianchi was an artist who reflected the hotel’s energy; eating here used to be thrilling and exciting, with the Amistà restaurants appreciated by both tourists and locals. Thus it’s even more shocking to us how bad things have become. What is served at Byblos now is not real, cooked food but a manufactured mush, designed for longevity rather than to be fresh, alive and tasty. It is not restaurant-quality food; it is half-prepared chain hotel food. It feels as if the kitchen just didn’t care, as if it is lousy and lazy. This problem spans every outlet: Amista, Saor, the pool menu, and the room service. To give a sense of how unattended everything was: the fish amuse-bouche in Amista was too frozen to serve, on both nights we ate the tasting menu (we tried Amista twice - it’s how much we couldn’t/didn’t want to believe it’s awful state but we subsequently cancelled our next 2 bookings). The other table also remarked on the defrosted starter being served at a Michelin star restaurant. As far as I’m aware freshness is one of the critical criteria for the star and freshness wasn’t there, just half defrosted fishy taste. The potatoes served with the shank from the 11pm evening room service were completely raw, which we showed to the staff (!), completely inedible/would cause at least digestive distress if eaten as raw potatoes tend to do. At Saor, we were served old paccheri with meat that had been stuffed into them days earlier and then reheated, as if we were eating in a long forgotten canteen in some desolate town. We also got dark green, overcooked, and reheated asparagus with equally unappetising, rubbery chicken. There were no specials apart from a single dish served on consecutive days. The Soar menu featured an artichoke dish that was constantly “out of season” at Saor (why not change it to something in season then?) while appearing on the Amista tasting menu. Valpolicella is a beautiful, lush garden full of fresh produce and meat - it’s not hard to find great suppliers, yet the kitchen serves mostly heavy, bland sauces, a lot of basil emulsion, and reheated, days old pasta and meats. Two exceptions deserve praise. The desserts are still great, because Pietro Recchia is an artist doing a great job keeping them as inspiring as they used to be. And the FOH staff are wonderful: attentive, hard-working people who go out of their way to provide the best service. We’re feeling sorry for them that they can no longer feel proud in what this place is offering. We raised the problems politely during our stay, then wrote a long, detailed letter to the owner. It went unanswered and while originally we didn’t want to publish this we ultimately concluded that we’d be concealing something we just couldn’t stand for and perhaps this way we can at least save someone looking for a true luxury experience a huge disappointment. Having originally extended our stay, which attests to how much we loved being here, we instead cancelled the remaining 5 nights and left early. We also cancelled our upcoming stay later in the year and said goodbye to our wedding plans at Byblos. 😢 The kitchen is now led by Executive Chef Donato De Leonardis, who arrived only in February; that may explain some of this, but it does not excuse it, because everything described above was served on his watch, five months+ into his tenure. He did not come to our table after the tasting menu two nights in a row; we are not even sure he is around. Amistà entered this year with its Michelin star confirmed (under the previous chef) for the sixth consecutive year, and what is served today, in every outlet, is not the cooking of a kitchen that intends to keep it. Whether this is the chef’s or the management’s we do not know; likely both, the result at the table is a kitchen run with a cost-saving mindset rather than to please its guests. If the food is not there, the heart is not there, and good people will move on while guests will not come back.

Beautiful hotel - art is cool. Staff were friendly There are no USB-C sockets in the room which is disappointing for a 5 star hotel. Breakfast was nice but you have to pay extra for an omelette etc and that is disappointing for a five star hotel The pool is lovely but the drinks were very expensive.