A New Hotel Perched in the Hills of Florence

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When the Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi completed the soaring cupola of the Duomo in Florence, Italy, in 1436, it was a feat of engineering that reshaped the city’s skyline. (It’s still the largest brick dome in existence.) From the surrounding hills, its red-tinged peak appears to hover above a sea of terra-cotta rooftops. Guests of Collegio alla Querce, the first Auberge Resorts Collection hotel in Italy, will have that vantage point from a 16th-century former college perched on the cusp of the Tuscan countryside. Designed in collaboration with the Florence-based studio ArchFlorence, the interiors pay homage to both the building’s scholastic past and its idyllic rural surroundings. The hotel’s restaurant, La Gamella — a refined trattoria named after the tin lunchboxes once carried by Florentine schoolchildren — occupies the college’s former dining hall, which in the 16th century was an open-air citrus garden. For aperitivi and nightcaps, there’s Bar Bertelli, dedicated to a former science teacher whose instruments are still on-site. In some guest rooms and suites not already adorned with original frescoes, walls were painted with sweeping landscapes, their hazy greens and ecrus a nod to the bucolic murals of Pompeian villas. Kemper Hyers, the creative director for Auberge Resort Collections, commissioned custom furniture for the 83 rooms and suites from Milan’s Paolo Castelli along with earth-toned ceramics by Studio Ceramico Giusti, which he discovered at the weekly market in Piazza Santo Spirito, just a short walk down the hill. Collegio alla Querce opens March 2. From about $1,600 a night, aubergeresorts.com.

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The performance artist Leigh Bowery packed a lot into his brief life before he died in 1994 from complications related to AIDS at age 33: he was a fashion designer, an art director for music videos, the frontman of a transgressive pop band called Minty and a model for the painter Lucian Freud. He resisted easy categorization, once remarking, “If you label me, you negate me.” Born in a sleepy suburb in Melbourne, Australia, Bowery moved to London in 1980 at 19 and proceeded to reinvent himself on the underground queer club circuit, particularly at Taboo, the renowned nightclub he founded. Using an array of bedazzled masks, bondage gear, wigs and sky-high platforms that further elevated his 6-foot-3 frame, he pushed the limits of transformation — and the norms of the time — through clothing and makeup. Thirty years after his death, his influence can be seen everywhere from the anarchic aesthetics of designers like Rick Owens and Charles Jeffrey to the subversive costumes worn by Lady Gaga. This month, a new retrospective opens at the Tate Modern in London. In a series of themed rooms — home, the club, the stage and the gallery — the show explores Bowery’s art, life and legacy through paintings, photographs, films and interviews with many of his collaborators, including the artist Cerith Wyn Evans, the drag queen Lady Bunny, the DJ Princess Julia and the musician Boy George. “Leigh Bowery!” will be on view at Tate Modern, London, from Feb. 27 through Aug. 31, tate.org.uk.

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Berlin’s Clärchens Ballhaus was built in 1913, at a time when the city had over 900 ballrooms. Now it’s one of the few left, and over the decades it has remained a beloved institution, hosting tango lessons every week in its landmark Hall of Mirrors. But it was underused and in disrepair, says the Berlin-born entrepreneur Yoram Roth: “The main ballroom only had one power outlet, and it was heated by two coal ovens.” In 2018, Roth — who also owns Fotografiska, a group of contemporary photography museums, and the NeueHouse co-working spaces in New York and L.A. — bought Clärchens and began planning a renovation. “Berliners never want anything to change,” he says. “I knew I had to completely redo the infrastructure but still make sure it looked like it did 112 years ago.” He kept the tango lessons (along with other types of dance instruction) and hired Uli Hanisch, the set designer for the neo-noir TV series “Babylon Berlin,” who carefully enhanced Clärchens’ faded ’20s aesthetic. Roth then brought on the German chef Tobias Beck to open the party-friendly restaurant Luna D’Oro, named after one of the Ballhaus’s dance teachers. “Tobias understands German cuisine but has a sense of humor about it,” says Roth, who recommends the Tartar Igel, a classic beef tartare in the shape of a hedgehog with spines made from thin slivers of onion. claerchensball.haus.