NOTES ON PARADIS PIETRASANTA HOTEL AND RESTAURANT
An ancient palace that served as a noble winter residence nestled between the 15th-century walls of the ancient Rocca di Sala and the entrance square in the heart of “Little Athens.” This is Paradis Pietrasanta, a 12-room, four-star boutique hotel and restaurant with a lounge bar, designed by Point Trois Architecture with Startt Architettura for owner Alain Cirelli, who actively participated in the renovation, design, and layout of the spaces.
The genius loci
“I was born in a hotel.” Fifty-eight years old, born in Chambery in Savoy, Alain Cirelli comes from a family with Lombard roots who fled for fear of fascism when his grandmother was pregnant with his father’s child.
They took refuge in Modane, where his grandmother opened a bistro offering “pasta and simple dishes.” His father then moved to Chambery where he sold trucks, while his mother worked for the shipping giant Danzas. Then, in the early 1970s, came a complete change of pace and life: there were no hotels on the road to the sea, so the Cirellis decided to open one, a country hotel with thirty rooms. But the real turning point in Alain’s life came in Paris: at 14 or 15, he was an apprentice at the three-starred Lasserre in Paris. He had gone there with his parents to celebrate his brother’s graduation from the École Nationale d’Administration. When the maître d’ asked, “Do you need anything?”, Alain candidly replied, “Yes, I want to work here.”
Thus began his career as a chef, which took him to Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence in 1992, where he remained until 1998. “I worked,” he says, “with Carlo Cracco and then with Italo Bassi and Riccardo Monco. When we had a few free hours, we would come to Versilia, and I immediately felt a wonderful connection between the sea and the mountains.” Flavors, memories, and sensations that he rediscovered 22 years ago with his partner Laurent, with whom, after settling permanently in the hills, he decided to make a new life change. And so the Paradis Hotel in Pietrasanta was born, followed by the Paradis Agricole.
Ancient heroes, refined taste
The atmosphere at Paradis Pietrasanta speaks volumes about Alain and his taste, his innate and unwavering passion for the Beautiful and the Good. Starting with the Ariodante lounge bar, named after his father, who was named after a hero of Orlando Furioso and then after a Handel opera: a beautiful room with Casamance velvet furnishings and iron and Bardiglio marble tables surrounded by works by great artists, including César and Folon, Lorenzo Quinn and Ciulla.
Here, according to the advice of bar manager Gianluca Montanelli, you can enjoy a light breakfast, with the classic quick Italian breakfast of coffee or cappuccino and a croissant.
Or opt for the breakfast menu, provided for hotel guests at a cost of €15 and consisting entirely of organic products: drinks, butter, jams, bread from the Lenzoni bakery in Camaiore and homemade focaccia, plus scrambled or fried eggs, bacon, and sheep and goat cheese platters.
You can also choose to have lunch in the lounge, à la carte with traditional dishes and options, and always featuring the fish of the day. On Sundays, you can opt for brunch (available daily) from 12:00 to 15:00, or for the “Sunday lunch” option (for which you move to the restaurant), with a choice between a land or sea menu for €50, including cover charge, water, and coffee, is a pleasant gastronomic pitstop on your tour of Pietrasanta’s treasures.
A snack menu is available from 3:00 PM to 10:00 PM, featuring focaccia, canapés, burgers, and other delicacies. These are also excellent as aperitifs, with various amuse-bouche options from 5:00 PM onward, paired with cocktails from a themed seasonal menu. In addition to the list of gins and classic spirits, you can choose from bitters, soft drinks, and coffee drinks, including beers from the Birrificio del Forte brewery. Nine signature drinks are also available, featuring products from the Paradis farm and local producers. Paradis also offers a daily lunch menu for €32, Monday to Saturday, including a starter, first course, and dessert, drinks not included.
Lunch in the museum
This was the armory of the ancient Rocca di Sala, the fifteenth-century fortress, and can be accessed from the lounge bar or from a narrow corridor that opens into what was once the tower of the city walls.
It borders the orangery garden, where you can dine in the cool summer air among the works of Bernard Bezzina. Before the tower, on the left, a moving space opens up.
A museum: a gallery filled with casts of famous works, starting with the celebrated statue of Emperor Octavian Augustus.
The white plaster casts contrast beautifully with the stone walls and the exquisite wooden furnishings, all handmade by a local craftsman. Here too, the iron tables with Bardiglio marble tops alternate with sleek chairs and sofas in gray Casamance velvet.
A charming niche houses a beautiful round table. The characteristic barrel vault is enhanced by the contrast of the neoclassical motifs.
The modern stools at the bar counter and the iron counterbeams that illuminate the tables, along with the understatedly elegant table settings (mostly white or pale-colored china), create a truly welcoming atmosphere that pampers you from the first moment and heralds what will be a remarkable culinary experience.
Chef Alessio Bachini, who brings his many years of experience in Michelin-starred cuisine, offers dishes that are both fresh and technically sophisticated. The utmost freshness is ensured by the raw materials, sourced from the sea and from the agricultural paradise with its fields, vegetable gardens, and livestock.
“Every day,” the menu presentation states, “our agroforestry harvests and selects fresh, seasonal vegetables for us. A journey that begins at Paradis Agricole and takes them directly from seed to plate, preserving their natural flavor.”
In short, a journey “conceived and conceived by the chef to rediscover the authentic flavors of nature”: a few lines to announce the philosophy of an intriguing menu, yet not overbearing, with just five options for each item. The tasting menu, priced at €70 plus cover charge and water, features five courses, as does the vegetarian tasting menu at the same price.
The chef, as he himself reveals, has constructed a menu inspired by ancient memories, home traditions, and the typical Tuscan dishes his grandmother prepared with the herbs they gathered together.
Here are the vegetarian amuse-bouche, all from the Paradis Agricole garden, presented in wooden or marble bowls and plates on a beautiful wooden tray: fried ravioli stuffed with cabbage and ginger, cecina with flavored butter, Brussels sprouts stuffed with caper mayonnaise, hay basket with beetroot rose, corn cannoli with cauliflower cream.
Then, a veritable carousel of flavors unfolds, blending traditional memories with refined creations: marinated amberjack with a fruit and vegetable gazpacho, artichoke, and Jerusalem artichoke chips; tomato; veal sweetbreads, always paired with fruits or vegetables of varying consistencies and acidities.
In the winter, organic snails; red mullet with pine nuts and fennel; chicken tortelli with cibreo sauce; pappardelle with farm-raised rabbit, blueberries, and bitter herbs; rigatoni with sea urchins, baby squid, and arugula; mezzipaccheri with cuttlefish and chard; rabbit cacciatore style;
The crispy egg that always changes based on the home-grown vegetables; the turbot with porcini mushrooms and potatoes. “Right now,” says Alessio Bachini, “we’re working on dry-aging fish, with red mullet being a prime example.
After all, why only dry-age meat? Many people think the best fish is freshly caught. However, by dry-aging, fish acquires flavor, bite, and textures different from what we’re used to. Clearly, each type of fish has its own timing, just like meat.”
Among the desserts to remember: chocolate temptation; brioche with apricot jam, ginger, and rosemary; robiola and figs; vanilla, goat’s milk, and orange millefeuille; chestnuts and pears.
The restaurant’s philosophy is zero waste. The entire team processes the raw materials from A to Z. From the onion, where every part is used, from the tender inside to the outer leaves and peel, to the cuttlefish, where the pulp is used to cream the pasta, the tentacles and internal bone are used to make jus, and the innards are used to create a sauce that is then poured over the top. Any leftover scraps are used as feed for the animals at Paradis Agricole. In all the menu items, vegetables and fruit, besides being locally sourced and, of course, seasonal, play a fundamental role; they are not only an accompaniment but also serve to balance the dish itself with different acidity, freshness, and aromas.
The restaurant has a maximum capacity of about sixty seats; the “living room” in the tower can accommodate sixteen people, while an outdoor terrace on the tower can be reserved for private dinners with dedicated staff. Finally, there are one hundred seats in the magnificent orange grove garden dominated by large trees that in the evening offer freshness and enchanting scents for dinner, but also for aperitifs or after-dinner drinks.
The city, the philosophers
The small door that opens onto Piazza Crispi is the gateway to Paradis, a four-star boutique hotel with eleven rooms and one suite spread across the first and second floors of the historic building. The rooms, offered on a bed-only basis (breakfast is available from 7:30 am to 12 pm in the Ariodante lounge bar, for €15), are all different, yet share some common threads: the wardrobes, all exposed except for the suite, the curtains, and a few details common to all but different in each, such as the works of art housed within and the tapestries created by Kahil Minka, a Moroccan artist who, one hundred kilometers from Marrakesh, provides jobs and a future for women victims of violence.
Beyond the front door, a beautiful staircase framed by a fine wrought-iron railing handcrafted by a local blacksmith (which also frames the parapet on the upper floor) leads to the hotel’s reception, a beating heart with a simple, homey feel. It stands amid shelves displaying products from Paradis Agricole, the guesthouse located two and a half kilometers from the sea, where all the breakfast items are sourced. Corridors painted in soft pastel shades of dove gray, muted gray, and beige lead to the rooms, each with unique names: the first floor is named after Tuscan cities, the second after famous philosophers. Six classic standard rooms measuring 23 square meters, five superior rooms measuring 33-35 square meters, and a 55 square meter suite with its own fireplace that can be lit according to the guest’s needs. Additionally, three rooms overlook the restaurant’s orangery garden and have a small private, furnished terrace designed by by the French landscape architect Jean Mus, the same one who created the exterior of the Paradis Agricole.
All rooms have private bathrooms furnished in white Carrara marble, typically with the bathroom area separate from the shower and sink area. Significantly, the rooms do not have telephones: communication is via tablet with the bar and reception, which in turn can communicate with Paradis Agricole, whose reception also manages all reservations and services requested at the Pietrasanta property.
Alain Cirelli, the chef-entrepreneur who transformed a dream into a landscape
Alain Cirelli is more than just a name in the restaurant business: he’s a story that unfolds between Paris and Florence, between Savoy and Versilia, between Michelin-starred kitchens and hillside vegetable gardens, between French discipline and respect for Italian produce. Behind his trademark measured smile and low profile, Cirelli has built a career path that deserves to be interpreted more as an existential experience than simply as a chef’s career.
Born in Chambéry in 1967 to a family of Italian immigrants, Cirelli brings with him two legacies: a culture of service—his parents ran a hotel-restaurant—and a natural inclination toward food craftsmanship. His training in the great kitchens of Paris, up to his apprenticeship with Bernard Pacaud at L’Ambroisie and his Italian experience at Enoteca Pinchiorri, are obligatory stages in a rigorous school that has hardened him; But they are also the testing ground where he honed a sensibility based on attention to detail and mastery of technique.
What makes his story interesting, however, is not the collection of famous names on his resume, but the transition that transforms the chef into a “place creator.” Paradis Pietrasanta, a boutique hotel housed in a historic building in the city center, and Paradis Agricole, nine hectares of olive groves, cypress trees, vegetable gardens, and custom-built livestock, are not just businesses or showcases of style. They are projects consistent with a vision: cuisine as a guardian of the land and memory, hospitality as a slow, cultural, and sensorial experience.
The choice to grow, raise, and produce his own produce is not an aesthetic quirk but a strategy of authenticity. “A chef always dreams of going to his own garden to pick his own vegetables,” says Alain. Water self-sufficiency, photovoltaic panels, and the return of animal species are concrete indicators of a restaurant model that legalizes the connection between dining and the local area: the supply chain is shortened, quality is measured, and the guest experience becomes exclusive and verifiable.
What differentiates his approach from the French or Italian “tradition”? It’s a summary. From France, he brings the discipline of techniques and the love of craftsmanship; from Italy, he learns the cult of the product, the simplicity that doesn’t hide but enhances.
He admits he no longer uses butter and cream: olive oil has rewritten his palate. This seemingly technical deviation is actually a cultural act: Alain reinvents classicism through a radical respect for the raw material. His role as an entrepreneur is equally significant. His ability to network local artisans, restorers, architects (including French ones, as he chose for the restoration of Paradis), and artists demonstrates a leadership that doesn’t impose, but articulates expertise. The result is a space that functions as an art gallery, an experimental farm, and a restaurant with lofty ambitions: a hybrid model of quality tourism and rural regeneration. The impact on Versilia is not just aesthetic: it’s economic and relational.
Establishments like Paradis enrich the local offering, create jobs, and attract a tourist demand sensitive to quality and sustainability. But more than that, they mark a cultural trend: the reconversion of Michelin-starred chefs into landscape custodians, choosing to return to the land part of the value created in the dining room. Alain is a witness to a change that affects the entire hospitality industry: the era of ostentation is giving way to that of responsibility. His work demonstrates that fine dining is not just high-tech, but also a civil service, a practice that that nurtures communities, protects biodiversity, and transforms tourists into curious guests, not hasty consumers.
If Paradis is a “paradise,” it is to the extent that it was designed and built to last: a project that strives for continuity, not ephemerality. In a landscape where restaurants often chase status and numbers, Alain Cirelli proposes a different ambition: to make beauty, care, and responsibility the true measure of success. And this, today, is already a revolution that cannot separate ethics from aesthetics.
