Hotel of the Week: This Secluded Resort in Montenegro Features an Exceptional Collection of Art
Mamula Island Hotel transforms a 19th-century fort into a 32-room retreat filled with unique works by talents who visited the property as part of an ongoing artists residency
Chance will not take you to Mamula Island off the coast of Montenegro. Located in the Adriatic Sea, the rocky projection is home to a stunning 19th-century fortress that can only accessed via boat. Its drawbridge is still in place, and the 170-year-old tanks continue to collect the rainwater that is used to irrigate its gardens. Visitors can, however, plan to come here on purpose, as Mamula has since been transformed into a 32-room hotel that revels in its remote tranquillity.
“I thought it was a bit wild at first,” says conceptual artist Ana Prvački, who spent a portion of the summer here as part of an artist’s residency. “But it worked its magic very quickly. In May and June, thousands of seagulls came here to nest, and I saw it as a place where man and nature could be together.”
Indeed, Mamula offers luxury of another stripe altogether. Sure, the cuisine served on the delightful outdoor terrace is by Eric Archambault, from the Michelin-starred Septime in Paris; the sheets are maximum thread counts; there are brand new floatation tanks at every guest’s disposal; and absolutely anything else is available upon request. But rather than fill the rooms with the usual five-star art, the hotel has instead welcomed artists. Prvački staged a beautiful performance in September where all attendees went home with a souvenir: an A3 poster that she had taught them how to fold into an origami seagull.
Of Romanian and Serbian parentage, Prvački was born in Belgrade, grew up in Singapore, spent eight years in Los Angeles, and now lives in Berlin. She understands the fraught history of the Balkan region, and feels that Mamula is an exceptional neutral space in a part of the world that is still testing its boundaries and neighborly hostilities. “Luxury is so many things,” she says. “I like to think there is luxury in the mind, so I created a series of ideas on the poster to fuel that.” She has included a recipe for a natural collagen cocktail with generative possibilities with help from the manager of the spa (herself an astrologer) and small vials of fig oil from the island’s own trees, to use as a lubricant in those friskier holiday moments. “Nothing is more luxurious than pleasure,” says the artist.
The hotel is owned by Egyptian billionaire Samih Sawiris. “It is his passion project,” says general manager Henning Schaub. “The lease agreement was signed in 2015, and then it took 18 months to excavate the central core of the fort to leave its original perimeter structure.” Now, this structure contains curving rooms, while other accommodations are in new bungalows, which can be entirely removed when the 50-year lease is up. “We have to leave it as we found it,” says Schaub, who learned his hotel skills in various Mandarin Orientals around the U.S. before studying communications in Berlin.
The architecture was carried out by the Lisbon-based MCM Architecture and Design, which has deftly integrated smart new German window systems and several swimming pools into the perfectly restored stone fabric of the fort. Next, 34-year-old Berlin designer Piotr Wisniewski, who works at weStudio, was brought in to fit out the rooms. Accommodating the existing architecture, he created freestanding furniture solutions such as large-scale oak wardrobes with curving tops and mirrored fronts, which double as room dividers.
There is certainly a post-modern sensibility at play, though Wisniewski says that the circles and arches that form the furniture are derived from those that make up the original citadel. Elsewhere, these geometric devices are found in desks, headboards, and simple wooden bedside stools. Following the rules of Balkan joinery, all the cabinets have been made dry-jointed, without the help of screws or nails.
A regular visitor since the hotel’s soft opening earlier this year has been Marija Karan, the celebrated Serbian actress who lives part-time in Los Angeles. Karan returned to Serbia last year to play the Alexis Carrington role in a Serbian remake of Dynasty and became involved with Mamula thanks to her not-for-profit organization, Balkan Projects. Set up in 2016 with a mission to support artists from the region, including those now living abroad, Balkan Projects has been responsible for bringing the artists to the island. “Art is a way of healing, of giving life a purpose,” says Karan. “The way this building has been restored and this huge investment in beauty and well-being feels like a new beginning.” (In its darkest hours, the fort was used as an internment camp by Italian dictator Mussolini, during the World War II. A small museum in the fort now tells that sad history.)
Other artists invited to Mamula include Angelo Plessas and Milica Jankovic, whose subtle soundscape could sometimes be heard outside this summer.
For her part, Prvački has left behind a pillow stuffed with seagull feathers. “It was inspired by animals who use their own bodies as pillows, like cats and snakes as well as by Durer’s incredible drawings of pillows,” she explains. “But it’s really about how we can make ourselves comfortable in different ways.” She has also embedded the memory of a magical summer evening, when she invited two opera singers to start at different points in the fort, performing a love duet (Caro Mio Ben by Tommaso Giordani) and finding each other by the sound of their voices. Mamula doesn’t really need an injection of romance, but on that night, under streaming silver moonlight, it seemed like there could never be enough.
Mamula closes for the season on October 31 and will reopen April 15, 2024. See more photos below.
