Hotel Ambra, A Different Kind of Alpine Hotel

Not Your Usual Mountain Hotel

Hotel Ambra is difficult to miss. The façade is a deep golden yellow with dark green shutters, white painted window surrounds and heavy timber balconies, with a weathervane at the apex and a row of cut-out winged angels mounted along the balcony rail. Painted frescoes sit above the upper windows. It is unmistakably Alpine, although the colour is a good deal more confident than anything else on the street, and it stands just off Corso Italia within easy reach of the shops, restaurants and cafés of the centre.

Step inside and things become considerably less traditional. The hotel belongs to Elisabetta Dotto, a third-generation hotelier born in Treviso who moved to Cortina in the late 1980s and acquired the property in 2006. Over the twenty years since, she has developed an identity that owes as much to fashion, cinema and contemporary design as it does to mountain hospitality, working with Imago Design Treviso on the rooms. The accommodation is divided into five Luxury Roof rooms furnished with antiques and Ampezzo craftwork, eleven Superior rooms with canopy beds and either jacuzzi tubs or double steam showers, and eight Classic rooms themed around cinema, fashion, nature and theatre.

Dotto has also written three books about the business, which is unusual in itself. Ciao ciao Cortina! Segreti e bugie della Locandiera came first in 2018, followed by La bellezza ci salverà in 2020, and most recently Parola di Locandiera. Moda e Hotellerie di Lusso in 2024, which examines the relationship between fashion and luxury hospitality directly. At Ambra, that interest is evident the moment you are through the door. She also owns Excess Venice Boutique Hotel & Private SPA, so the approach has been tested in more than one setting.

It remains an unusual position for a mountain hotel, particularly in a town where timber, stone and traditional Ampezzo decoration are still the default references.

Contemporary Alpine, Upstairs

We stayed in one of the refurbished rooms on the top floor, where the design is noticeably more restrained than anything downstairs. Timber panelling gives the room its Alpine character, but the finish is contemporary and the modern comforts have been worked in without losing the warmth of the materials. The result feels appropriate to Cortina rather than an attempt to recreate an old-fashioned ski lodge, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds.

From the window we looked out across the town's rooftops towards the surrounding peaks. There was no private balcony, but the view was a reminder of how extraordinary Cortina's setting is, and of how little the town needs to do to earn it. A handwritten welcome card, fresh fruit and a bottle presented in an unusual orange carrier were waiting on arrival. These were thoughtful touches, and consistent with the attentive hospitality we found throughout the stay.

The room served as a quieter counterpoint to the interiors below. It is a balance that works particularly well: calm, contemporary accommodation where it matters, with a great deal more freedom of expression everywhere else.

Downstairs, A Different Personality

Zelda Champagne & Cocktail Club is where Ambra's flamboyant side is given its head. It opened in 2022 in what had been the hotel's salle de thé and takes its name from Zelda Fitzgerald, which tells you most of what you need to know about the register.

The walls are black and covered edge to edge in ornate gold frames, perhaps a hundred of them, holding images in the surreal pop idiom associated with the Italian project Toiletpaper: a lipsticked mouth, a plate of spaghetti, ballerinas mid-leap, a parrot in a blue suit, a kitten surrounded by rats. A carved stone fireplace anchors one wall with a large gilt mirror above it, and on the opposite wall a neon sign reads Save Water Drink Champagne. The furniture is velvet in clashing colours, purple and olive and crushed red, with low pouffes scattered across a carpet colour-blocked in red and yellow over herringbone parquet. A glass-fronted fridge stacked with champagne and sparkling wine stands in the corner, magnums of Ferrari lined up along the top. Art and ski books are left out on the tables.

There is a great deal going on, but it reads as deliberate rather than accumulated. The room has the atmosphere of an eccentric private sitting room, with no apparent interest in the restrained palette that dominates so much contemporary luxury hospitality.

Lanterna is a separate proposition in a separate room. Set in the hotel's glass-panelled garden room, it is a hi-fi bar built around a bespoke sound system, serving cocktails alongside small plates. Designed by Now.Here Agency and developed in partnership with the clothing label DENHAM, it brings a Japanese sensibility of restraint and craftsmanship into the Alpine context, and the design language is as pared back as Zelda's is maximal. The cocktail programme was developed with bar manager Cesare Ferrari, and the menu arrives in a denim cover stitched in yellow thread with the Ambra, DENHAM and Lanterna marks set one above the other. Signature drinks were €15 during our visit: Tommy's Margarita, Paloma, a Martini Shakerato, a Silver Mountain built on gin and lavender syrup, and Denham a Cortina, a sake-based drink that makes the collaboration's Japanese thread explicit rather than decorative.

The two rooms could hardly be less alike, and that appears to be the point. Zelda is loud, warm and visually relentless. Lanterna is quiet, glassed in and organised around sound and food. Neither resembles the anonymous hotel bar of a large international chain, and having both means the hotel can offer a completely different evening without the guest leaving the building.

The Hospitality Matters

For all the attention paid to Ambra's interiors, the service was among the strongest parts of our stay. It was attentive, welcoming and personal without becoming intrusive, and that matters enormously in a hotel with such a pronounced design identity. There is always a risk in a property of this kind that the decoration becomes the main event and the hospitality is left to catch up. Ambra does not have that problem.

Breakfast is a buffet built around local produce, with artisanal pastries alongside savoury items, and it made a pleasingly grounded start to the day after the visual exuberance of the night before. The position is a considerable asset. Corso Italia is a short walk away, the centre of Cortina is comfortably on foot from the door, and the hotel sits close enough to the Faloria lifts to make a car largely unnecessary. Cortina is an expensive town for hotels across the board, with rates that reflect the Olympic attention as much as the setting, and against that backdrop an independently owned property of this quality in this position holds its own.

The 2026 Winter Olympics brought a wave of international attention to Cortina, and a good deal of new five-star development with it. Ambra's identity predates all of that by many years. Dotto's transformation began in 2006 and the hotel's interiors were well established long before the Olympic preparations started. This is not a property assembled to capitalise on a moment.

Why It Earns Its Place

What makes Ambra interesting is the contrast between its parts. From the street it looks like a traditional Alpine hotel, angels notwithstanding. Upstairs the refurbished bedrooms are contemporary, comfortable and calm. Downstairs, Zelda commits entirely to colour and excess while Lanterna, a few steps away behind glass, sets a completely different tone. There is a single clear personality behind all of it, and the quality of the hospitality is what makes the combination convincing rather than merely eccentric.

Dotto's most recent project offers an instructive contrast. Sollievo Cortina, acquired in 2025, is a restored 1939 villa set in private woodland above the town, and it is as secluded and quiet as Ambra is central and sociable. Together they make the point that this is a hotelier with a range rather than a formula.

For our stay, Ambra delivered what a good independent hotel should: a comfortable room, an excellent position and service that was consistently thoughtful, with enough individuality to make the whole thing memorable. Cortina has no shortage of traditional luxury hotels. Ambra is worth considering precisely because it has never tried to be another one.

Disclosure: Our stay at Hotel Ambra was hosted by the hotel. All editorial opinions and scores are independent.

Sources

Hotel Ambra Cortina, official website

Antiga Edizioni, Parola di locandiera

Supper Magazine, Now.Here Agency reveals Lanterna design details

We Heart, Lanterna HiFi Bar & Lounge, Ambra Cortina

Coqtail, Cocktail Bars in Cortina

Luxury Travel Magazine, Sollievo Cortina