Montecatini Terme plans to erect signs in Cyrillic after Svetlana Medvedeva, wife of outgoing president, visits its luxury hotel
A luxury Tuscan spa hotel which has hosted the likes of Giuseppe Verdi, Paul Cézanne and Arnold Schwarzenegger during its 142-year history has rolled out the red carpet for an unexpected arrival from the world's new capital of bling – Moscow.
Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of outgoing Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, has hitherto avoided a reputation for rock star living, but made a start this month by booking out the entire Hotel La Pace in Montecatini Terme for a week and showing up with her son and a 30-strong entourage, including bodyguards and translators.
In a move worthy of an oil sheikh's wife, Medvedeva, 46, arrived while the 140-room hotel was shut for the winter, prompting staff to hurriedly throw open the shutters and plump up the pillows as Italian police set up a security operation in the small town.
As Vladimir Putin retakes the reins in Russia from her husband, Medvedeva may have wanted a breather from hectic years of opening art festivals, meeting Japanese orphans and visiting crisis centres for underage mothers.
With rooms going for €600 a night and suites at up to €1,300 – plus the price of saunas and massages – the elegant, Liberty-style Hotel La Pace clearly looked the right place to splurge.
Clark Gable, Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn have all checked in to sip the local water over the years, and discreet staff have handled smoothly guests with peculiar requests or capricious behaviour, including the Polish count who insisted on clearing the restaurant for a game of tennis to a British lord who was ticked off for flicking cherry stones at other guests during dinner.
Medvedeva's visit followed promotional trips made to Moscow by hotel managers, reported Italian daily Corriere Fiorentino.
Her stay, the hotel hopes, will trigger an onslaught of Russian oligarchs and their wives, just as Roman Abramovich's visit to the Tuscan resort of Forte dei Marmi turned it from a genteel hideaway for Milan industrialists into Moscow-on-sea, and Putin's stay at Silvio Berlusconi's Sardinian villa helped clog the island's Emerald coast with Russian yachts.
Massimo Giovannetti, a local official in Montecatini Terme, told Corriere Fiorentino the effects of Medvedeva's visit "will be seen in the coming months when Russian tourists who love classic spas will turn up in ever greater numbers".
Mixing Russian millionaires and Italian lifestyle has not always proved easy. The mayor of Forte dei Marmi has made plans to keep new local housing back for locals after prices spiralled, while in Sardinia bottles were reportedly thrown by rich Russians at pop star Zucchero after he objected to a woman texting while he sang.
The Hotel La Pace has its own experience of high maintenance Russians. In 1908 the Russian ambassador to Italy complained the buzz of crickets was ruining his afternoon nap, prompting a resourceful manager to send two guitarists to his room to play "sweetly and without stopping".
Giuseppe Bellandi, the mayor of Montecatini Terme, appeared to welcome the prospect of a Russian invasion, promising that from this season signs in the town will be written in Cyrillic as well as English and Italian.