Menorca Experimental: Summer Is Just Getting Going at this Chic Island Resort

For the many of us with mid-August blues: Summer has barely begun at Menorca Experimental, a resort designed by Remodelista favorite Dorothée Meilichzon. Set on a former finca, or agricultural estate, on the Spanish island of Menorca, the appealingly low-key alternative to neighboring Mallorca and Ibiza, the hotel was created from a Palladian-style, cliff-top house and cluster of whitewashed farm villas.

All were reconceived by Meilichzon, who runs her own Paris design studio, Chzon, as a dream agroturismo retreat: the sort of place Picasso, Miró, and cronies would go to live it up in the sun. The results are both grand and playful—and filled with happiness-inducing details and earthy colors we want to apply at home. Join us for a tour.

Photography by Karel Balas, courtesy of Menorca Experimental.

The Hotel

built for a military captain at the turn of the 19th century, the main structu 14 — Above: Built for a military captain at the turn of the 19th century, the main structure sits amid groves of pine and juniper on nearly 75 acres overlooking the Mediterranean (the beach is a 10 minute walk down the hill). It’s now home to indoor and outdoor restaurants, a cocktail lounge, and 34 guest rooms.

Menorca Experimental is part of the 10-hotel portfolio of the Paris-based Experimental Group; Meilichzon is married to one of its three founders—they all met as students—and she herself, at 40, has a dozen top-to-bottom hotel designs to her credit (see Paris’s Hotel des Grands Boulevards and The Henrietta in London). This year, the Experimental Group opened Regina Experimental Biarritz and Cowley Manor Experimental in Gloucestershire.