The historical Hotel Suites

The historical hotel suites of the Grand Hotel Trieste & Victoria of Abano Terme:

- Suite 110 Diaz
- Suite 111 Badoglio
- Suite 109 Scipioni
- Suites Palazzo Storico

If you want to receive the book “Room 110” (General Diaz) please send an e-mail with your request to triestevictoria@gbhotelsabano.it or call +39 049 866 5100.

The history of the rooms  110 - 111 - 109

Room 110

"I choose this one. It’s the best solution: this is a quiet room which allows me to stay close to my men "

To General Armando Diaz it was not necessary to give orders, he simply just asked to be obeyed. The best definition was probably given by Gabriele D'Annunzio, who emphatically painted him as the "Master of serene courage”, but also from others came gratifying reviews: Giovanni Artieri spoke of him as "a man of well-pondered courage", or "malleable with an adaptive intelligence" (Angelo Gatti), “with a quiet and indisputable will "(Olindo Malagodi)," good diplomat "(Indro Montanelli) "with a calm temperament " (Francesco Saverio Nitti and Olindo Malagodi). In fact, as noted by Luigi Gratton, scholar and friend of the Diaz’s family, the general was " peaceful by nature, polite and affable in the features and in the personality, qualities that are not alternative to the firmness, if anything additional". So when in January 1918 it was decided to move from Padua to Abano the Supreme Command of the Army, was completely normal that nobody could criticize the decision of Armando Diaz to choose the hotel Trieste as their permanent location " the most beautiful, the most modern but also the most functional of all in the Euganean Baths". Here he moved the heart and soul of our Army and Diaz accommodated his restricted staff. Diaz chose the room 110, the one on the first floor, right in front of the stairs. Badoglio instead finds hospitality in 111 and Scipioni in 109, on the same floor and next to 110: the maximum for responding to the needs of efficiency. The room assigned to Armando Diaz is the easiest to reach and  to move to other areas of the hotel but also to the outside, without wasting time, where in the courtyard his personal Balilla was parked ready to move at his needed request. Not to mention that the hotel Trieste is located in the heart of Abano, on the route that leads both in the direction of Padua and Monselice, Este. And then the Trieste is just facing the hotel Orologio that has large rooms on the ground floor and where was located the officers' mess. To complete the picture there is Villa Bembo operating in Monterosso, where was preferable to move the Press Office, the structure that was responsible for drafting press releases and where it was actually prepared the report of Victory on November 4th, 1918, that he read, corrected, amended, approved and signed by General Diaz in the Hotel Trieste, in the apartment 110 which combined bedroom and study. The decision of moving, from Padua to Abano, the Supreme Command of the General Staff was taken at the end of 1917 when the Town of the Saint (Padua) is sorely tested by a series of bombings. In all nineteen  air raids with bombs, and as many as ninety-seven the alarms triggered after reports of sightings of enemy aircraft. The legend of the invincible general starts right here, the decision to pack up and move a quieter spot such as the Hotel Trieste in Abano Terme. The Carabinieri blocked the area without disturbing the traffic.

On the tramway Padua-Torreglia, which passed just under the seat of the command, only residents are allowed provided with special permission. The room 110, which, as we said, is actually a small apartment of forty-five square meters, is an emblem of that Great War which marked the end of a process of reunification of the Country and which cost the sacrifice of thousands of Italians. A sober, gentle, efficient and functional emblem right for this reason perfectly able to represent Italy at that time, the value of the military man who led our Army which in that leader, with a Spanish surname, but a Neapolitan temperament, well identified itself. Obviously, the room 110 at the Hotel Trieste e Victoria still exists and the several owners who followed on since 1918 have ideally all passed the same order: try to change as little as possible to leave intact the climate of official status, that sense of history that has made this beautiful hotel a place dear and sacred to the Country. The apartment was well kept intact even if the provision of renewal for obvious reasons, something has changed. Not the floor made in strips of wood that should have resisted the restructuring that followed. The gold knob typical of an hotel room does not alter the profound sense that sticks to the skin as soon as you cross the threshold into a kind of thrilling revival made of old emotions. For us grandchildren or great grandchildren of those who lived those days it is easy to see that sense of "we are the history" a painful era in which we relive, but exciting for the destiny that was fulfilled and the incredible impact that followed 1918. As soon as you enter the room on the left, there is still the original desk, placed against the wall, with a big arm chair to gaze into the old mirror framed with dark wood, the same one in which General Diaz looked every morning. On the right side of the entrance a plain beige living room with two armchairs and a coffee table in walnut wood colour. To make everything warm and welcoming the environment are laid a number of carpets. On the walls there are lights and different pictures, some of the time and surely some others more recent. Facing the parlour there is a French window that leads to the spacious terrace that joins up also the second room, the bedroom. But, we remain in the first room, the one used as living room-study. To the apartment has been saved the splendour of a modern five star hotel although, while maintaining the delicate atmosphere of a Suite of the past century has not been deprived of the typical comfort of a Grand Hotel: so just in front of the big door that opens onto the terrace, has been placed a large-screen television. The environment is completed by a corner wardrobe, a valuable space that General Diaz used to stow uniforms and boots. The bedroom is accessed by a connecting door. Also here the atmosphere is spacious and bright: nearly five meters by four with access to the bathroom with bathtub. Two windows and a French door, enable the exit to the terrace with its beautiful view of the heart of Abano Terme, with the public park and the clock standing as a reassuring witness and the lovely liberty style theatre, which in the early twentieth century was a miracle of elegance and modernity and has been wrongly pulled down. The underneath road connecting Padua to Torreglia was travelled by a tram every now and then, from quick and discrete green-grey cars with carabinieri on duty to confer that sense of discipline, of order and silence strictly military. It's amazing to think how in such a Franciscan simplicity was handled and decided the fate of millions of soldiers.

Armando Diaz officially took possession of the rooms at the Hotel Trieste on February 5th 1918 to remain there until the end of the war. In fact, the Generalissimo (nominated for the post of supreme commander in the place of Cadorna on November 8th 1917) had already made site visits in early December. Probably the rooms were made available to the General and his staff since the end of 1917, hence the accuracy of the dates listed on the marble plaque placed near the door of room 110. But if Diaz remained in Abano Terme eleven or ten months it is of secondary importance, what makes historical the position of the Supreme Command in the Hotel Trieste is that sequence of events leading to the conclusion of the First World War, the bloodiest , the hardest, the most painful of all human history.