MICHELIN Key hotels in Italy: the 2026 selection, region by region

The MICHELIN Key is the Guide's award for hotels, from one to three, judged on architecture and interior design, service, personality, value for money and what the hotel gives back to its surroundings. It says nothing about the restaurant, and nothing about size or price.

Italy's 2026 selection, published on 18 September, has 224 hotels with a Key: seventeen with three, forty-nine with two and 158 with one. A year earlier, in the selection of 8 October 2025, Italy had 188. The new total is four more than France, the highest in Europe, and second in the world to the United States. Forty-four of the 224 hold their level for the first time this year, new to the Guide or promoted: four with three Keys, six with two and thirty-four with one. Besides its Key hotels, the Guide selects another 687 in Italy without one.

Where the 224 Keys are

The Guide divides Italy into regions of its own: the Amalfi Coast and Lake Como count apart from Campania and Lombardy, and South Tyrol and Trentino go together as the Alps and Dolomites. This is the count from its index on 13 October 2026, with the three lakes put together and the Aeolian Islands with Sicily. Rome, with 21 Key hotels, is the city with the most, ahead of Florence (14), Venice (13) and Milan (11).

The seventeen hotels with three Keys

Tuscany has four of the seventeen, two of them in Florence, and Venice and the Amalfi Coast have three each. They run from four rooms at Corte della Maestà, in the hilltop village of Civita di Bagnoregio, to 121 at the Four Seasons in Florence. We rate all seventeen; each has its own page on The Unlisted.

Four new three-Key hotels in 2026

One came straight in at the top. Airelles Palladio, on Giudecca across from St Mark's, is the French group's first hotel outside France, set partly in a building designed by Andrea Palladio, and the Guide named it the Opening of the Year.

The other three were promoted from two Keys. Collegio alla Querce, Auberge's first hotel in Italy, opened in March 2025 in a 16th-century building on a hill above Florence that was a Barnabite college from 1868; it won two Keys that October and its third a year later. Splendido, above Portofino, was redecorated by Martin Brudnizki in 2025. Borgo Santandrea is a 1960s building on the Amalfi coast, rebuilt under the architect Rino Gambardella and furnished from its owner's collection of mid-century pieces.

Forty-nine hotels with two Keys

Milan has six of them, more than any other Italian city, and no hotel with three. Rome has five, Lake Como four and Florence three. Six are in our guide: Forestis, Castel Fragsburg, Villa Eden, Lefay Dolomiti and Aman Rosa Alpina in the mountains, and Borgo Egnazia in Puglia.

The 43 Key hotels we rate

We cover Italy region by region: Tuscany, Venice, the Amalfi Coast and Capri, Rome, Lake Como, Umbria and Tuscia, Portofino, Taormina, Modena, Puglia, the Dolomites and the rest of South Tyrol. Every hotel below holds a Key. Two more in our guide, Castello di Velona at Montalcino and Masseria Moroseta near Ostuni, are not in the Guide at all.

Tuscany: 45 Keys, fourteen of them in Florence

Tuscany has more Key hotels than any other Italian region, and Florence alone has fourteen: the Four Seasons and Collegio alla Querce with three Keys, Villa Cora, Villa La Massa and Palazzo Portinari Salviati with two, and nine with one. Just outside the city, Villa San Michele, a 15th-century monastery at Fiesole, looks down on it with one Key.

In the countryside the Keys follow the wine. Castiglion del Bosco is a Brunello estate of 5,000 acres at Montalcino and Borgo Santo Pietro a 13th-century estate with its own farm at Chiusdino, south-west of Siena; both hold three Keys. COMO Castello del Nero, in the Chianti, and Castello di Vicarello, a family-run castle in the Maremma hills, hold one each. Our Tuscany guide compares them, and Tuscany in autumn covers the best season to go.

South Tyrol and the Dolomites: twenty of twenty-one

The Guide's Alps and Dolomites region, South Tyrol with Trentino, has twenty-one Key hotels, five of them with two Keys, and we rate twenty. The one we have not reviewed is Castel Maurn, eight rooms at San Lorenzo di Sebato. The five with two Keys are Forestis, a sanatorium begun in 1912 on the Plose above Brixen and rebuilt with three timber towers; Castel Fragsburg, a hunting lodge of 1624 above Merano; Villa Eden, an adults-only retreat in Merano; Lefay Resort & SPA Dolomiti, at Pinzolo in Trentino; and Aman Rosa Alpina, in San Cassiano, an Aman since 2025.

For skiing, start with our Dolomites ski guide. For Merano, the wine road and the high valleys, the hotels are on our South Tyrol page.

Puglia: sixteen Keys, none with three

Puglia has three hotels with two Keys, Borgo Egnazia and Masseria Torre Maizza at Savelletri and La Fiermontina Palazzo Bozzi Corso, ten rooms in Lecce, and thirteen with one. Savelletri di Fasano, on the Adriatic between Bari and Brindisi, has four Key hotels on its own, among them Masseria Calderisi. Palazzo Daniele, an art hotel in an 1860 palazzo near the tip of Salento, holds one. Our Puglia guide explains how to choose between a masseria and a town.

Venice and the Amalfi Coast: six of the seventeen

Venice has thirteen Key hotels, three of them with three Keys, more than any other Italian city, and we rate all three. Aman Venice fills Palazzo Papadopoli on the Grand Canal; the Hotel Cipriani and Airelles Palladio stand side by side on Giudecca, across the water from St Mark's. The Cipriani is closed until June 2027; Airelles opened in 2026.

The Amalfi Coast has twenty-five Key hotels, seven of them on Capri, and its three with three Keys are in our guide too: Il San Pietro di Positano, built down the cliff at Positano; Borgo Santandrea, above Conca dei Marini near Amalfi; and J.K. Place Capri, by the harbour on the island. Both areas have their own pages: Venice and the Amalfi Coast and Capri.

Rome, the lakes and the rest of the seventeen

Rome has twenty-one Key hotels, more than any other Italian city, and the Bvlgari Hotel Roma is the only one with three. Lake Como has eight, and Passalacqua, at Moltrasio, is the only one with three. The other five are single stars in their regions: Splendido above Portofino, San Domenico Palace in Taormina, Casa Maria Luigia outside Modena, Reschio in the Umbrian hills and Corte della Maestà, four rooms in the car-free village of Civita di Bagnoregio, the smallest of the seventeen.

How we built this page

The Keys and the counts are those of the MICHELIN Guide's 2026 selection for Italy, read from the Guide's own hotel index on 13 October 2026. The totals match the figures MICHELIN published with the selection on 18 September, and the four new three-Key hotels are those named in MICHELIN's announcement and the hotel trade press. The regions are the Guide's, with the three lakes put together and the Aeolian Islands with Sicily. Room counts are the Guide's. Every hotel we rate is scored on the Unlisted Index. Inclusion is editorial and never paid. Availability links may be affiliate links, which can earn The Unlisted a commission without changing your price.