HotelSan Lorenzo di Sebato · Now open
Castel Badia, a medieval castle hotel in South Tyrol's Puster Valley
A thousand-year-old fortress and former convent above San Lorenzo di Sebato, reopened as a 28-room hotel after a three-year restoration.
Castel Badia, also known as Schloss Sonnenburg, sits on a wooded hillside above South Tyrol's Puster Valley in a complex founded around the year 1000 as a fortified seat of justice. It became the first Benedictine convent for women in historic Tyrol, then a military hospital and a poorhouse, before falling into ruin until Karl Knötig rebuilt it as a hotel in the 1960s. Hotelier Aldo Melpignano reopened it in December 2025 after a three-year restoration by local studio Null17, with interiors by Droulers Architecture and designer Marta Ferri.
The idea was to keep the layers rather than smooth them over: frescoes, Romanesque vaults and an 11th-century crypt survive, while new touches stay discreet. In the former Abbess's Hall, burnt-orange banquettes and rounded tub chairs sit beneath ribbed vaults. Each of the 28 rooms and suites follows its own setting, some timber-clad with wrought-iron beds, some with private saunas or hammams, and there is a detached three-storey chalet.
Chef Alberto Toè cooks South Tyrolean food in a panelled Stube and plaster-ceilinged dining rooms, with a more experimental chef's table around an open hearth. The underground spa turns former monastic cells into treatment rooms; outside are two heated infinity pools and 17 gardens.
Yatzer notes a Best Design win at the Best Luxury Hotel Awards 2026. A good base for Dolomites hiking or skiing, with Brunico and Zaha Hadid's Messner Mountain Museum Corones close by.
Our summary of a story from Yatzer, published 25 October 2026. Read the original
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From Yatzer