Sport and relaxation in the high valleys of Pavia’s Oltrepò region

Perched at 1250 metres above sea level, overlooking the Staffora valley to one side and the Trebbia valley to the other, Piani del Lesima gives way to a vast green plateau at the foot of Monte Lesima, at 1724 metres the highest peak in the Lombard Apennines. This typical mountain location is a paradise for anybody who loves the outdoor life. It is also home to the recently refurbished Sport Hotel Prodongo.
Before work commenced, the hotel consisted of a building with three floors above ground and a partly underground basement, plus a sports area alongside. The aim of the refurbishment, planned by Studio Tecnico Tornari, was to modernise the entire complex and bring it into line with the latest disabled access regulations and the latest trends in the hospitality market.
The first phase of work involved extending the building to add a new restaurant dining room, simultaneously renovating an existing room and its toilet facilities, creating a new hall and reception area, renewing the furnishings in the first floor bedrooms and installing a lift to provide disabled access between the various floors. This last aspect of the project proved the most challenging. The existing structure offered only one viable location for the lift: outside the building at the end of the first and second floor corridors. This meant enclosing the lift shaft in a new architectural element, built on to and supported by the main structure. This solution allowed the hotel entrance to be redesigned, making it more practical from an architectural point of view and more homogenous in terms of style.
In the second phase of work, the hotel’s facilities were upgraded by adding a brand-new Spa & Wellness Centre complete with indoor swimming pool and equipment typical of top-flight leisure destinations. The space for this was obtained by restructuring and extending the basement rooms previously used for storage. Large panoramic windows were also installed. A comfortable Junior Suite and a new conference room were fitted out at the same time.
Materials were selected primarily for compatibility with the hotel’s natural surroundings. The walls are therefore finished in local roughhewn stone; the load bearing structures in natural wood; the roof in antique effect, French style, cement roof tiles; the external doors and windows in wood; the window sills and door steps in naturally split serizzo granite; and the guttering in copper. Given this architectural context, grey Pietra di Combe porcelain tiles from Keope’s In&Out Percorsi Extra collection proved the perfect choice for the floors of the dining room and Spa & Wellness centre. The walls of the Turkish bath and showers are similarly finished in natural Pietra Dorica tiles from the In&Out Percorsi Style collection combined with Decoro Muretti Strutturato Sand tiles from the Percorsi Quartz collection.