It's changed where you'll likely want to stay whilst in Florence. For many year the JK Place has been one of the cities most beloved hotels, a combination of high-design and stylish clientele that made it the hotel epicenter for fashion editors and Louis Vuitton-totting tourists. But that was until June 2008 when the Four Seasons Florence was unveiled to a city that usually doesn't whence at foreign hotel competition.
 
It isn't the Xeroxed new Four Seasons you'd recognize stateside, instead following a European model of renovating historic landmarks like Budapest's Grisham Palace that become equal parts luxury hotel and art museum. Four Seasons Hotel Firenze is located in the 15th-century Palazzo della Gherardesca and its neighboring and slightly newer 16th-century convent where previous residents include Italian noblemen, a Pope and an Egyptian Viceroy who sold the property after his harem was barred from occupying the property.
 
The location surrounds private Goardino della Gherardesca garden where real Dolce Vitas sip tea with pointed pinkies and more than a few Americans awe marble sculptured temples and one of the prettiest pools you will ever see under the real Tuscan sun. Inside the hotel, a four-story center atrium with frescoes commissioned by Alessandro de Medici makes the 10-minutes walk to the town's real museums seem not so urgent. 

The Room:

Four Seasons Hotel Firenze offers 116 guest rooms and suites, no two of which are alike, located within the historic Palazzo della Gherardesca and the Conventino. Guests get quite comfy with the Medici life, quickly trading in their cameras after the first day to better fit in with the hotel’s more bourgeoisie elements. Breakfast is of locally sourced Paolo Parisis eggs on real silver service brought to your bedroom door before having the concierge deliver athletic shorts and running shoes in your size to take a job in the 11-acre private park and then a Tuscan Cypress scrub by spa staff with sultry accents rubbing you down in local Santa Maria Novella body products. Try to book into one of the 8 upgraded suites that includes the Noble Suite with its own bed-top gold emblazoned fresco of a renaissance market scene that should almost require a ticket to see.