Family-run hospitality by Lake Garda

The mediaeval village of Chiarano just outside Arco on the Trentino side of Lake Garda is an excellent base for a relaxing vacation. The fifteenth-century Church of Sant’Antonio Abate, hiking routes through the hills dotted with olive trees and celebrated by poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke, mountain bike trails and natural rock-climbing gyms are just a few of the attractions of this splendid natural region. It was here that more than sixty years ago Annamaria and Gianni Negri launched what was to become the social hub of the village, the Da Gianni restaurant, popular not only with local residents but also with artists, actors, politicians and tourists.
With the passing years and the growing success of the restaurant, the owners began to think about expanding and restoring the old guesthouse owned by their grandmother Nonna Angelina and start up a fully-fledged hospitality business. «We decided to radically remodel the guesthouse using top-quality materials. We chose the very best curtains and ceramic tiles then available on the market,» explained the owners. Eventually the guesthouse took on its present-day form spread over two separate buildings, both located in the village of Chiarano. The main building with the reception and breakfast room dates back to 1591, while the secondary building a hundred metres away was purchased in the late 1990s and derives from a remodelled late nineteenth-century building. The renovation project for this second unit «took into consideration aspects of green building and energy saving», said the owners, «together with a search for high-quality traditional materials such as wrought iron, terracotta floor tiles, solid wood furniture painted with natural paints and organic fabrics».
The B&B can now accommodate 28 guests in 13 rooms, some of which were recently renovated to bring them up to contemporary functional and aesthetic standards. As in the previous renovation projects, the Negri family once again played a big part in the design and decision-making processes, planning the work in every detail and choosing the materials and interior design solutions that they thought would be most suitable for their guests.
«Renovation work began in 2017 with the first two rooms, then continued in 2018 with the other three to complete the second floor,» they said. «Rather than entirely reorganise the structure of the house and rooms, the renovation project aimed to maintain the building’s history. As in the previous years, we were keen to find materials that would be highly innovative while preserving a strong sense of tradition.» The owners chose Cementine_20 and Cementine_Retrò floor tiles from Ceramica Fioranese because their design reminded them of the tiles from Nonna Angelina’s kitchen, maintaining a strong link with the history of the house. «For the 2018 renovation, we chose six different types of Cementine tiles for use in colour-coordinated pairs in each of the three rooms,» the owners continued. «The joints were filled with both cementitious and epoxy grouts, which were chosen so as to be as similar as possible in colour to the tiles and create an impression of seamless continuity. The tiles also dictated the choice of colours of the other materials. We were so impressed by the beauty of the Fioranese design that we also decided to use the tiles on the bedside tables, the wrought iron benches and above all on the bathroom vanity tops.»