Casa Bonavita, a magnificent new hotel in Malta

In the autumn of 2010, Suzanne and Christopher Sharp went for an impromptu viewing of a mansion in Malta. It was in the tranquil interior of the island, on a street in the ancient village of Attard. Behind its limestone façade, the founders of The Rug Company discovered a dimly lit, flagstone-floored interior layered with bourgeois furniture and papal art. “It had a very nostalgic atmosphere,” says Suzanne of the house, called Casa Bonavita. “We couldn’t believe we had walked into something so unspoilt.” 

Though not looking to buy, the Sharps were beguiled both by the mansion’s romantic dilapidation and the surprise immediately south of it: a series of unusually large, high-walled gardens. “It’s an unassuming exterior that gradually unveils itself,” says Christopher of its shaded paths, populated by statuary and hot-pink flashes of bougainvillea. With the delicate scent of orange blossom pervading the air, it proved irresistible. “It was such a rare find,” says Christopher. “We fell in love.”

Casa Bonavita was built in 1715, between the walled city of Valletta and Mdina, the old baroque capital, as the country residence of a Francophile family with Venetian roots that rose to prominence in Maltese society in the 1600s. In the years that followed the Sharps’ acquisition, the house became a place of solace for them as well. They holidayed there, retreated to it with their family during lockdown and hosted their daughter’s wedding on the premises – all while gradually reviving its interiors, tearing down false ceilings to reveal the original grandeur of its corbels and arches. As they did, an intriguing idea began to unfurl: what if they were to transform their occasional home into a hotel?

Casa Bonavita will open to guests in May, with 17 rooms. “We wanted to create the hotel we’d like to find in Malta – to show people the island that we see,” says Suzanne, who grew up in the Maltese town of Sliema before moving to Rome aged 12. “This is our take on it.” 

It has been a decade in the making, and at the core of their vision was a desire to imbue the house with an intimate sense of place. “We’re not about to start a chain of hotels,” says Christopher, who cites Beirut’s Albergo Hotel, a classic 1930s mansion, as an inspiration. “We want to create this one lovely institution so that if you’re into design, and come to Malta, you’ll stay here.” Guests enter via the stone-arched former stables, whose walls have been painted with potted orange trees and fantasy coats of arms to create an informal reception.

Meandering through the reception, and out into the garden, along the rear of the main house, guests arrive at a hallway whose 19th-century frescoed ceilings, baroque furnishings and Aubusson carpet set the decorative tone throughout. “We’ve really had a lot of fun, and we’ve done a lot of shopping,” says Christopher of the house’s Mediterranean art and Genoese furniture, gathered with the help of their son, antiques dealer Jamie Sharp. 

“Malta is such a mix of different cultures,” says Suzanne of the archipelago’s history of conquests and colonisation, which continued until its independence in 1964. “You can tap into Sicilian, English, Arab, Spanish and Portuguese influences – it all works.” Rather than playing down the interior’s past life as a home, they preserved it, starting with its heart: a kitchen clad in Sicilian tiles with a Lacanche range, where guests can come any time in search of replenishment.

In the adjacent dining room – formerly a courtyard garden – now hung with bamboo chik blinds, the Italian muralists Alfonso Orombelli and Luna Aulehla Greppi spent six weeks reproducing its original verdant, alfresco atmosphere. The resulting impressionistic softness nods to the Monet-inspired mood of Yves Saint Laurent’s Deauville mansion, Château Gabriel. 

But Christopher also envisages guests dining at tables under the lemon-laced pergola or on the plumbago- and agapanthus-bordered lawns, where he has deliberately nurtured a feeling of abandon. There’s a trellis-fronted outdoor bar shaded by a Guido Toschi tent, and an adjacent corner filled with sofas for Negronis and backgammon, the Sharps’ game of choice. Palm trees are strung with lanterns whose design was inspired by the Tangier home of the late antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs. 

The seven bedrooms in the main house (the remainder are in separate annexes) are calm and serene. “I don’t like things to be too fussy,” says Suzanne of the spaces, which are furnished with ceramic lamps by Villa Bologna Pottery (their daughter Sophie Edwards’ nearby workshop), suzani textiles and Karabagh rugs. One bedroom, in the former salone nobile, has marble-effect wallpaper, a grand canopied bed and a Maltese balcony that evokes the mashrabiya woodwork of old Cairo. Suzanne traces her obsession with interiors to her childhood days exploring similarly grand Maltese mansions – many abandoned after the second world war – at open-house auctions she attended with her grandfather, a hobbyist restorer.

The emphasis throughout is on privacy and seclusion – breakfast can be served to guests in their room, many of which have private balconies or terraces. By one of the pair of pools, the Sharps dug deep to create a jewel-toned tiled, high-ceilinged subterranean spa with studded Sicilian doors. 

The Sharps’ lives have long been guided by their shared sense of adventure. “We come from very different places; Suzanne is Mediterranean and I’m from rural Uganda,” says Chris. “But we always wanted the same life, and got excited about the same things – houses, gardens, decorating and travelling.” In London, they eyed up one another on their regular Piccadilly line commute, before eventually meeting at a mutual friend’s party. 

After marriage 40 years ago, they moved to Saudi Arabia, where Christopher, then a television editor, was employed to establish a new production studio. With little in the way of entertainment, they trawled the local souks, buying up Afghan carpets. That gave rise to The Rug Company, whose modern renditions of traditional carpets – and collaborations with designers including Sir Paul Smith, Alexander McQueen and Dame Vivienne Westwood – proved phenomenally successful, with 28 shops from Los Angeles to London to Munich. 

They sold the company in 2015. “We needed to simplify. I’d got so bored with myself,” says Christopher, who went on to write and direct an Oscar-nominated documentary about the life of Ugandan political activist and musician Bobi Wine in 2022. “This is another totally new experience – we’re really learning again.”

“We always wanted to open a little hotel,” adds Suzanne. One winter they even decamped to Tuscany, with the first of their four children, in search of possible locations. “It was freezing cold, we had a baby in the back of the car and we kept being shown piles of stones in the middle of a field,” says Christopher. “It was super-demoralising.” 

So they returned to Malta. Suzanne vividly recalls their voyage by boat back to Valletta. “Sailing into the grand harbour is one of life’s wonders,” she says, sitting in the hotel’s bar. Inspired by that scene and the canvases of the 18th-century Maltese artist Alberto Pullicino, the bar panels form a dramatic backdrop to lavish Dudgeon sofas, upholstered in chartreuse velvet, and 1960s Henry Link bamboo chairs. “It’s my fantasy bar moment,” says Suzanne. A similarly old-school spirit is channelled by a bar menu of club sandwiches and hamburgers.

Casa Bonavita came with a dilapidated 19th-century folly located just across the road (serving, according to local lore, as a grocer’s during the second world war). “As the village grew, former owners bought the plot opposite, as they didn’t want to be overlooked,” says Christopher. The Sharps are transforming it into a suite with its own pool and palm-lined garden; Christopher envisages it as an ideal escape for guests who want to bask in solitude.

At the front of the main house is the bijou Casa Bonavita boutique, which will offer an array of clothes, Maltese gold jewellery and painterly ceramics from Villa Bologna Pottery. “But no rugs – definitely no rugs,” says Christopher before disappearing into the garden, where the silence is broken only by the meditative toll of church bells.   

casabonavita.com, from €390