These aren’t the tree houses of your childhood. The new spa treatment rooms that hover just below the tree line at the Grand Hotel Timeo, a Belmond Hotel, in Taormina, Sicily, are next-level cocoons of style and wellness that aim to please even the fussiest sybarites.
In celebration of the hotel’s 150th anniversary, Belmond has partnered with the iconic fashion and fragrance house Dior on two new pop-up spa tree houses called Le Jardin des Rêves Dior Spa, only available through October 2023. The interiors and design of the cabins (one single and one double) are the work of Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri, while the wood and bamboo interiors are by ThirtyOne Design + Management.
The Dior spa suites at the Grand Hotel Timeo, a Belmond Hotel, have sea views.
Courtesy of Grand Hotel Timeo, a Belmond Hotel
As a nod to the leafy setting outside, Chiuri took the famous Dior Toile de Jouy pattern and reinterpreted it on the suites’ drapes in a green hue. Inside, guests will find bamboo and rattan seating, brushed brass lamps, and sheets made from organic fabrics. The suites have sea views and are surrounded by the more than 150-year-old cypress trees that are part of a heritage garden created by Florence Trevelyan, an English noblewoman, in 1882.
The treatments all center on Dior skin care, created with warm-weather needs in mind. To prolong your suntan, go for the Dolce Vita Solar Glow treatment. (If your day’s schedule includes more sun time, your massage therapist will cover you in sunblock, and if it’s the end of the day, you’ll get an after-sun balm.) For those looking for anti-aging TLC, spring for the Dior Prestige Haute Précision facial.
Guests can relax on the veranda of the Dior spa suites after a treatment.
Courtesy of Grand Hotel Timeo, a Belmond Hotel
The tree house spa suites feel like a fitting new experience at the well-regarded 71-room luxury retreat, which opened as Taormina’s first hotel in 1873 with views of Mount Etna and access to Sicily’s most picturesque beaches. Grand Hotel Timeo has an illustrious list of previous guests that include Gustav Klimt, Audrey Hepburn, Tennessee Williams, and D.H. Lawrence, who worked on Lady Chatterley’s Lover here.
The Jardin des Rêves Dior Spa isn’t Dior’s first partnership with Belmond, a luxury hospitality group with a global collection of hotels, train services, and river cruises. They collaborated in 2022 on a pop-up spa at Splendido, a Belmond Hotel in Portofino, and because of its popularity, the spa returned this summer. In 2023, Belmond also added a Dior Spa collaboration on the Royal Scotsman train.
“Le Jardin des Rêves Dior at Timeo is a one-of-a-kind experience, which not only allows us to offer our guests the chance to experience treatments open air, but also to enjoy the feeling of being suspended between sky and earth,” says Sarah Gambacurta, the spa manager at Grand Hotel Timeo. “The tree-cabins make you feel literally immersed in nature, and this is a wellness trend many people are looking for nowadays.”
