A Targa There
On Negronis, volcanoes, and the people who make you feel seen.
In Central Park you can buy a bench.
They put a small plaque on it — a targa — with whatever message you choose. People do this for all sorts of reasons. To remember someone. To mark a moment. To say: I was here, this place was mine, and I want that to be permanent.
I understand this impulse completely.
I want a targa at the Mezzatorre Hotel in Ischia . Second table towards the bar. Facing the Vesuvio.
Me, islands and volcanoes — you understand by now that this is a constant. From my hotel terrace I see Stromboli on a clear day, doing its thing across the water. Vulcano is always there on the horizon. And now Vesuvio, ancient and magnificent, watching over a perfectly balanced Negroni I didn’t plan to order.
I am a tequila drinker. I want to be clear about this.
But Massimo suggested the Negroni. Massimo has worked at the same bar for twenty years. When someone has done something with love for twenty years, you listen — not because you have to, but because that kind of devotion produces a particular authority that has nothing to do with credentials and everything to do with care.
So I had the Negroni. Not with a big block of ice — finally — perfectly balanced, with a side of incredible olives, exactly as it should be. Margherita by Cocciante playing on the piano. The Vesuvio sitting across the water doing what volcanoes do when they are not erupting, which is looking magnificent and permanent and completely unbothered.
And Massimo smiled at me the way people smile when they are genuinely happy you are there. Not because it is their job to seem happy. Because they actually are.
“Signora Motta, io mi sono affezionato.”
Naples charm. It got me. Completely, immediately, without resistance.
I sat back and thought: I really hope I give this to people.
Not the Negroni — though the Negroni was excellent. The feeling underneath it. The one that is so difficult to manufacture and so immediately obvious when it is real.
The food, the design, the service need to be right — they are the ingredients, beautiful and important. But they are not the point. The point is the moment someone walks through a door and feels, without being able to explain why, that they are exactly where they are supposed to be. That someone noticed them. That someone is genuinely happy they came.
People forget the menu. They forget the thread count of the sheets. They never forget how a place made them feel.
Massimo made me feel seen. In one Negroni. At a table facing a volcano.
That is the whole thing. That is all of it.
A guest sent us an email last year, right after check-out.
“Thank you. I’m the quiet one — my wife does the talking — but I just wanted to say thank you. I’m not a well man and I have three happy places in the world. Number one is wherever my wife is. Number two is in the garden of the Shilla hotel in Jeju Island, South Korea. Here with you is number three. You, your hotel, and your staff make my wife cry with happiness. So one more time — thank you.”
I read this and sat with it for a long time.
I should ask Mark about a plaque. Actually — maybe we should just start doing that.
I am a creature of habit. I like the idea that some things are perfect as they are and do not need to become more. I have learned — slowly, through many cities and many seasons and many volcanoes — what is enough.
And enough, I have come to believe, is not a compromise. It is a decision. The art of it is knowing what actually matters and stripping everything else away until what remains is irreducible: light, stone, sea, silence, a Negroni with olives and a piano and someone who is genuinely happy you are there.
I have my list of places that made the list.
A jazz bar in Manhattan. A rooftop pool in Bangkok. the lighthouse in Byron Bay where you can spot whales. A rock next to the Lingua lighthouse. The Barry’s studio in Chelsea — I know, we will talk more about this particular addiction. A specific table at the Mezzatorre in Ischia, facing a volcano, where Massimo works and has worked for twenty years and still cares about getting the Negroni right. Sometimes, if we are truly lucky, places are also specific persons.
And I have the ferry from Naples to Salina.
If you ever decide to try this journey — and you should — you want the Laurana. Hands down the best ferry of all time. I want to be very clear about this. It has an 80s style that most people consider a flaw and I consider a feature. In winter it is sometimes replaced by a smaller, more broken version — but the journey is always my favourite in the whole world.
You depart from Naples in the evening. You wake up at 6am in Ginostra while Stromboli erupts in the distance. You watch the seagulls from the deck.
Last time, on the smaller older ferry, the bathroom was broken and unusable and the cabin was too small for two people with any dignity. Filippo and I ended up eating bresaola and parmigiano on the deck because there was no other clean spot on the boat.
I was so happy.
Is there anything more beautiful than watching the sun set over the Vesuvio and waking up at 6am in Ginostra waiting for Stromboli to erupt?
There is not. I would like a targa on the Laurana too. It should say: “3 year old Anita loved to stare at seagulls flying past Ginostra.”
Because she did. Because I still do.
Someone once asked me what my main goal with Principe is. I never quite know how to answer. It always feels too big and too simple at the same time.
But maybe this is it. Maybe this has always been it.
People who want a plaque, a “targa”.
The table in Ischia made the list. Massimo made the list. Mark made the list. The ferry from Naples to Salina — broken bathroom and all — will always make the list.
I hope Principe makes yours.
Con affetto,
Anita
P.S. I am going to ask Mark about that plaque. I am completely serious.