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©2026 elleemme studio
Excelsior Grand Hotel
location
year
status
program
services
area
timeline
San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy
2025 - ongoing
schematic design
residential/adaptive reuse
architecture
6.900 mq
concept design 2025 - schematic design 2026 - detailed design 2027 - costruction 2028
local architect: Fabio Scarpantoni
structure and geology: Gae Studio
mep and fire safety: Q Sistem Engineering
images: Xhensila Ogreni
Marco Tedesco
The Excelsior Grand Hotel stands a few steps from the seafront of San Benedetto del Tronto, a significant example of the hospitality architecture that shaped the Adriatic coast in the second half of the twentieth century. Closed to its original use, the building is now being converted into housing.
The project works by subtraction. Volumes and façades are left untouched, the reinforced concrete frame from the 1960s is preserved, and the intervention concentrates on the interior through a selective strip out. What was a hotel corridor lined with rooms becomes fifty-three apartments, from small units to larger ones on the upper floors, where the terraces open towards the sea.
The quality of living here is measured by the thickness between inside and outside. Loggias, balconies and filter spaces are the real subject of the design: they extend the apartments outwards, shelter them from the sun and turn the coastal landscape into the identity of the building. On the ground floor, the former lobby becomes the shared heart of the complex, with amenities and gardens; the basement holds parking and storage.
An existing building, kept as it is, asked to do something it was not built for. The answer is not a new form, but a different way of inhabiting the one already there.