La Magnolia

La Magnolia is the gastronomic restaurant of Hotel Byron — a Liberty-style five-star property on Viale Morin, opened in the 1920s as the seaside villa of a Florentine industrialist family, converted to a hotel in 1958 — and holds one Michelin star under chef Cristoforo Trapani. The dining room sits in the original 1920s villa garden, under a 200-year-old magnolia tree (which gives the restaurant its name), with thirty-six covers across two outdoor terraces and an indoor Liberty-style dining room.

Trapani took the kitchen in 2013 — a Cinque Terre native, trained at La Pergola in Rome (three Michelin stars under Heinz Beck) — and runs a contemporary Italian menu with deep regional sourcing. The seven-course tasting rotates seasonally; signatures include a hand-rolled spaghetto alla chitarra with Versilia spider crab; a slow-roasted Tyrrhenian sea-bass with green tomato and basil oil; a Mazzara del Vallo red-prawn crudo with green olive; a wood-fired Adriatic octopus with lemon confit; the famous 'soufflé al cioccolato' that the pastry team has refined since 2015.

The wine list runs to 1,000 references with a Tuscan-coast spine and a serious Tuscan-interior section (Brunello, Chianti Classico, Carmignano). Sommelier Stefano Cuoghi runs the floor and the pairing flight at €130 is heavily Tuscan-led.

The dining room and garden terrace together hold forty-eight covers — twenty-four indoors in the Liberty-style dining room, twenty-four on the magnolia-tree terrace. The summer terrace is the most romantic dining setting in Forte dei Marmi. Service is hotel-grade — uniformed captains, choreographed plate-arrival, exact pacing. Hotel Byron itself is twenty-eight rooms; most diners stay overnight.

La Magnolia is the proposal-grade table in Forte dei Marmi when the brief is romantic-villa rather than institutional. The 200-year-old magnolia-tree terrace is among the most photographed dinner settings on the Tuscan coast, the thirty-six-cover room means total privacy, and the seven-course pacing accommodates a slow-moving evening. Brief Stefano three days ahead and ask for the corner two-top under the magnolia — the team have done dozens of proposals across the years.