Although it seems
that his daughter, Sofia, has taken over the family trade, Francis Ford Coppola
has hardly retired. The coming year will see the premiere of Youth Without
Youth, a small film he wrote and directed; a new Tokyo restaurant; and his fourth hotel.
Instead
of returning to the jungles of Guatemala,
where Mr. Coppola built his last eco-chic retreat, he is going back to his
roots in Basilicata, the Coppola ancestral
home in southern Italy.
Its more
than appropriate. The raw ancient landscape is dotted with cinema-ready hilltop
cities like ancient Matera,
a maze of stone cave dwellings that dates back to the Paleolithic period.
Indeed, it has been the setting for almost two dozen films, from King
David starring Richard Gere to Mel Gibson's
Passion of Christ.
Two years ago,
Mr. Coppola bought a 19th-century palazzo close to Matera
in the smaller town of Bernalda and is converting it into
a 10-suite boutique hotel (www.blancaneaux.com), to open as early as next
year.
He is not the
only one grooming the spectacular region for travelers. The pioneering Sassi
Hotel (39-0835-331-009; offers 25 rooms carved into Materas chalky stone. The Hotel SantAngelo (39-0835-314-919, reopened last spring
after more than a decade of renovation. And only a year after opening a hotel
in a medieval village in Abruzzo, the Italian
millionaire preservationist Daniele Kihlgren is now
at work transforming caves into 18 bedrooms in Matera.
Basilicata is clearly angling to
become Italys
next blockbuster.