Meet Succession and Stanley Tucci’s Italian travel fixer
Emily FitzRoy’s exclusive Bellini Travel concierge unearths Italy’s secrets for a fortunate few.
If someone whispers, “You’re going to Italy? You have to call Emily …”, you know you’ve made it. Emily FitzRoy is the tech bro, movie mogul, billionaires’ flex; the boot-shaped country’s magic maker, revealing secrets you’ll never see on influencer reels or travel planners’ websites. And a bit like finding religion; once the mega-bucks brigade travel in Italy with FitzRoy and her company Bellini Travel, they can’t resist proselytising and showing her off like a shiny new toy.
But if you’re wondering whether Bellini Travel was at the sharp end of Venice’s recent Bezos matrimonial extravaganza … it wasn’t. Although FitzRoy has orchestrated many of the biggest fandangos over the years, there was a giveaway: her staff only ever use folding clipboards so that you’ll never manage a glimpse of the guest list or who’s a no-show.
“We’re all about details,” says FitzRoy, spry in a red dress, scooping her blonde locks into a ponytail while grinning so wide her eyes disappear. “We get it right.”
But equally, big bank doesn’t guarantee a Bellini Travel party. “I only take on 100 clients and I don’t churn out weddings,” says FitzRoy. “We only do one celebration a year and I have to get on with the couple getting married or having a party. We put so much love into these celebrations, there has to be a bond.”
While most wedding and party planners work with the same florist, musicians and caterers, this is not the Bellini Travel way. “I’ll chat to the clients and get a feel for what they might love; maybe it’s persuading Massimo Bottura to let super sexy head chef Francesco [Vincenzi] out of Franceschetta58 to come and cook for a night. Or persuade Antonia [De Simone] from Lo Scoglio to let her chefs come and cook an incredible lunch. It’s always something wildly special.”
FitzRoy’s path to being the go-to guide to Italy for the wealthy and well-connected wasn’t linear. Her career began as a receptionist for a Sony Music record label in London. “I think they hired me because they found my posh accent so funny,” she says, that grin again.
She soon moved up the ranks. “Though I was possibly the worst A&R junior in the world …” says FitzRoy. “I turned down all the greats.”
So she left to write a book. And in the meantime, her travel-agent uncle asked her to create an online subscription-based guide to Italy. The internet was brand new, and this was his get-rich-quick super plan. FitzRoy spent an entire summer researching. The content was good, but only about 10 people subscribed. “He made the grand sum of £93 [$191],” she quips. “But then something happened. People would call me and say, ‘I’m going to Rome for a weekend. What shall I do?’.” And so, 25 years ago, Bellini Travel was born.
“My clients are so interesting,” says FitzRoy. “Some want to do Italy’s greatest hits in two weeks, others are fascinated by artisans and craftsmanship or obsessed with food and wine.” One of the most important things, she explains, is matching the right guide to the right client. “Some clients are hugely intellectual and esoteric and want an incredible professor or gallery curator,” she explains. “Whereas others look at the Roman Forum and go, ‘Oh god I hate rubble’, but I know the right guide who will bring it to life.”
Her favourite trips to plan are for those wanting something out of the box. “I love a challenge,” says FitzRoy. She currently has a client on a two-week driving holiday, visiting all the most curious and wonderful winemakers in central Tuscany. “He’s doing it in his Aston Martin DB5 – you know, like the one from Goldfinger.” So far, so dreamy, but here’s the kicker … “The car only has four gears, no aircon and can’t go up a hill steeper than this …” she angles her hand a fraction. “I had to work really hard researching and planning the route with flat roads. So far he’s thrilled.”
Another recent request came from a hugely successful Silicon Valley client with a penchant for old masters, who wanted to see all the Raphael works in private hands. “That’s the kind of thing I love,” says FitzRoy. “Doing the research, calling up owners, pulling people, places, art together like a great big jigsaw.”
Looking after some of the most world’s most exacting clients means always being on the front foot. “Remember when the Icelandic ash cloud descended in 2010 and the world froze because no aeroplanes could fly?” says FitzRoy, through a twinkly smile. “Well, I remembered that the Orient Express was leaving Venice the following morning, so we managed to get all our clients out of Italy with the added bonus of an unexpected adventure.”
Equally unexpected is her favourite place in Italy: Naples. “The first time I went, everyone said, ‘Don’t go. > It’s so dangerous, you’ll get mugged’,” she says, gesticulating. “But the minute I arrived I thought it was the best place I’d ever been.” The love affair is undoubtedly ancestral. “My grandmother Antonella was from Naples,” says FitzRoy. “She married my grandfather, a Scottish marquess.” (FitzRoy is in fact Lady Emily – her brother is Duke of Grafton – but she never uses her title, “Unless I’m really cross!”). Her grandmother moved to her husband’s castle near Edinburgh. “She basically brought Napoli to the Scottish Borders. She had a wonderful Italian cook called Dora and on Easter Day before traditional Sunday lunch, we’d have mountains of spaghetti and antipasti. I adored it.”
So now FitzRoy loves to introduce her clients to Naples. “I’ll take people to a pizzeria, then lead them round the corner into the basement of a dodgy council house, where … there’s an incredible Etruscan tomb with the oldest head of Medusa ever discovered.”
This high-low formula is a Bellini Travel trademark. “I think the ebb and flow of a holiday is so important,” says FitzRoy. “And if you just go from one five-star hotel to the next, you can be in a bubble and not experience how this extraordinary country and its people work.
“And one of the best things about Italy is often the cheaper the food, the better it is,” she adds.
After a glamorous party to celebrate the 60th birthday of her friend Marie-Louise Scio’s famed Il Pellicano hotel, FitzRoy went on a research trip to Rome. “I went to Testaccio, still the working-class quarter of Rome, and found some amazing little restaurants there; the kind of places where you won’t hear another English voice.” And when pressed on her choice of a last supper? “It has to be the mussel soup at Da Adolfo in Positano. Delicious!
“But when I send clients, I make sure to point out the ‘unmodernised lavatories’!” she laughs.
There’s the odd close call, of course, such as the woman who lost her diamond brooch in Venice. “I thought I was going to have to dredge the Grand Canal,” says FitzRoy. “I looked up at one of the gondolier poles and spotted it twinkling. It had somehow attached itself to a seagull’s nest.” But no client has ever fallen in. “Men in particular … don’t want to hold a gondolier’s hand when getting into a boat, but I’m quite strict. You always have to hold a hand in Venice. No one wants to end up in a canal.”
She’s equally strict about nixing romantic ideals. “I’m incredibly bossy and opinionated. So when honeymooners say, ‘We want to drive the Amalfi coast in an Alfa Romeo in July’, I reply, ‘And that will be your first marital row; the roads are narrow and jammed with buses and tourists. It’s terrifying. Do it on a boat instead’.”
It’s this tried-and-tested know-how that means FitzRoy has become Italy’s go-to for the movie business. “Covid was terrible; I had to shut the office and make everyone redundant. But then I got a mysterious email in my junk mail,” she explains. “‘Dear Sir/Madam, I’m the director of a TV show called Succession and we’re struggling to find the right location for a certain character.’” Not only did FitzRoy successfully deliver the perfect spot, (the Lake Como estate of tech billionaire Lukas Matsson), but she so impressed Succession director/executive producer Mark Mylod that she was employed on set as a consultant. “I’d say things like, ‘Hmmm that ashtray needs more cigarette butts’.”
The White Lotus followed, with FitzRoy introducing its creator Mike White to the San Domenico Palace, Taormina, a Four Seasons Hotel. Recently she has travelled with actor Stanley Tucci, researching for his National Geographic series, Tucci in Italy.
Mylod describes travelling with FitzRoy as “jaw dropping”. “Everywhere we went she was embraced with genuine affection like a close family friend. She is that rare human who effortlessly combines a wonderfully easy hedonism with laser focus and an incredible work ethic.”
Recently in Florence, “A friend took me to a house in the hills,” FitzRoy explains. “It’s just been restored, never been rented and when I walked in I gasped; there was a Donatello sculpture and the biggest Luca della Robbia terracotta sculptures I’ve ever seen. Immediately I’m thinking which of my clients will feel like they’ve died and gone to heaven when they stay here.”
It’s this kind of detail that makes FitzRoy the cultural Tinder for the 0.1-per-centers, delivering travel’s holy grail – exclusive access. So if you’re lucky enough to hear her name whispered … make that call.
This story is from the September issue of WISH.
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