Lido
Villeggiatura

Lido Villeggiatura opened on 10 June 2024 as the beach club of Villa Sant’Andrea, the Belmond hotel that has stood on Mazzaro bay since the days when Taormina’s visitors arrived by steamer, and it was the group’s first attempt at a standalone destination beach club anywhere in the world. The name is the pitch. Villeggiatura is the old Italian word for the long, unhurried summer decampment to the coast, and every detail here, from the Evian face sprays to the complimentary flip flops, is engineered to sell that idea by the day.

On our Sicily club directory we rank it first on the island, and the ranking survives the price tag for one reason: nothing else on this coast runs a lido with this level of intent. Whether that intent is worth 300 euros of your own money is the honest question this page exists to answer.

The kitchen is the part that justifies the pilgrimage even for people allergic to cabana culture. Brizza holds just eight tables with their feet effectively in the water, and Executive Chef Agostino D’Angelo runs a seafood tasting menu against a list of rare Etna wines that have been cellared under the sea, a flourish that would be a gimmick anywhere the wine was not this good. Through the day the bar keeps things simpler, lemon granitas, coastal cocktails and an aperitivo hour that fills as the light softens, and cabana guests can order a chef prepared picnic delivered to the deck.

The scene runs on a gentler clock than the price suggests. The programme starts with sunrise yoga and morning swims in water that stays glassy inside the bay, the middle of the day belongs to cabanas, watersports and runs out to the Isola Bella reserve on the club’s own Gozzo 35 boat, and by late afternoon the mood is spritzes rather than sets. There is no DJ arc building to midnight here. By eleven this is a candlelit dining room with waves, which for its intended crowd, couples and well funded families, is precisely the point.

The shortfalls are worth naming. The entry price buys polish, not exclusivity of view, because the free and cheap ends of Mazzaro and the classic Isola Bella lidos share the same scenery for a tenth of the outlay. Season dates and closing times are not published anywhere we can verify, so a shoulder season visit needs a phone call first. And the cabana cancellation ladder is genuinely strict, half the booking gone two weeks out, three quarters inside six days, all of it on the day.

Mazzaro is the quieter of Taormina’s two famous coves, a tight horseshoe of clear, typically calm water framed by cliffs and pines, with the cable car from the town above dropping almost to the shore. The bay is shared, so beyond the club’s umbrellas you will find modest lidos and free rock platforms with the same view. One headland along sits the islet that gets all the photographs, covered in our Isola Bella beach guide, close enough to swim toward and served by the club’s own boat for snorkelling runs.

The address is Via Nazionale 137, on the coast road below Taormina, and you enter through the hotel’s front door rather than off the sand, which sets the tone before you reach the water. Anyone booking beach services gets complimentary parking in the designated area just outside, worth knowing on a road where summer parking is otherwise a blood sport. Coming from town without a car, the cable car down to Mazzaro leaves you a short walk away.

Booking runs through the club’s online system, by phone on +39 0942 6271 200, or by email to the hotel reservations desk, and Brizza’s eight tables take their own reservations separately. Book the cabana only when your plans are firm, because the cancellation terms bite from two weeks out. If you would rather have the whole day arranged in one go, share your plans in the form on this page and we will have the club confirm space and current rates for the day you want, with no fee on our side.