As season two forsakes Hawaii for Italy, the manager of Taormina’s Four Seasons tells of his real guests’ foibles
One of the greatest Italian actors, Massimo Troisi, best known for Il Postino, once said that the beautiful Sicilian town of Taormina, where the second season of the multiple-award winning class-war satire The White Lotus is set, had only one flaw: “There are few poor people here.”
It would be hard to find a better spot to set the story about overprivileged, super-rich holidaymakers staying in the Sicilian outpost of the luxury White Lotus resort chain. As with these guests’ sugar-coated existence, Taormina – which sits on a hill facing the Ionian sea, boasting a breathtaking view of Mount Etna – can feel like an artificial bubble compared with neighbouring settlements on the island, which is one of the poorest regions in Europe.
