A Life Well Lived: How Susanna Addari Made Antigua’s Inn at English Harbour Her Own

Some luxury hotels make an impression through grandeur. Others leave their mark more quietly. Tucked along Antigua’s Freeman’s Bay, The Inn at English Harbour belongs firmly to the latter. Set within an expansive private waterfront estate, the intimate, family owned retreat features just 31 rooms and suites, lush tropical gardens, and a secluded beach. Its historic green stone terrace overlooks the bay, while the sailing culture, restaurants, and charm of English Harbour are just minutes away. Nelson’s Dockyard, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is easily reached aboard The Inn’s private boat.

For Susanna Addari, the Italian born art historian behind The Inn, the story began with love at first sight. While sailing around Antigua with her late husband, Enzo, she discovered the property from the water and was immediately captivated. Not long afterward, Enzo purchased The Inn as a gift for her 40th birthday, beginning a deeply personal relationship with the property that has now spanned more than three decades.

Today, Addari affectionately calls The Inn her “third child.” Her Italian heritage, appreciation for art and history, and instinct for understated elegance have shaped a retreat that feels more like a private home than a traditional luxury resort. The interiors are collected rather than decorated, personal rather than staged. Her grandmother’s silver candlesticks sit quietly in the reception cabinet, while handwritten notes welcome returning guests with thoughtful details about what has changed since their last visit. It is a reflection of Addari’s approach to hospitality, where genuine care, discretion, and a sense of belonging matter far more than extravagance.

In conversation with Haute Living, Addari reflects on the wonderfully eccentric English Harbour of her early years, her personal approach to hospitality, and the art of a life well lived.

Haute Living: You first discovered The Inn at English Harbour from the water while sailing with your late husband, Enzo. What do you remember about seeing Freeman’s Bay and The Inn for the first time and when did you realize this was somewhere you wanted to make part of your life?
Susanna Addari: Enzo and I first saw The Inn from the water while sailing around Antigua. It looked quite different then: there were about twenty rooms in three two-storey buildings along the beach, while the original hillside area, where the Terrace Restaurant is today, was almost exactly as it is now.

It may sound romantic, but it truly was love at first sight. The Inn already had a very strong personality, colonial, elegant, but never grand or self conscious, and it seemed completely at home beside Nelson’s Dockyard. What I remember most was the extraordinary sense of peace.

Not long afterwards, Enzo bought The Inn for me for my 40th birthday. It was an extraordinary gift, and neither of us could have imagined then how much of my life it would come to represent.

Haute Living: You were born in Italy and trained as an art historian, but Antigua has now been home for more than three decades. How have those two worlds (your Italian roots and your life in the Caribbean) shaped your personal aesthetic and the way you approach hospitality?
Susanna Addari: My Italian upbringing gave me a strong sense of beauty, proportion, culture, and tradition, but I was also always a little rebellious about the life I was expected to lead. Antigua gave me something completely different: freedom, simplicity and the possibility of creating a life on my own terms.

In those early years, my European background was quite different from what surrounded me, and I think that contrast sharpened rather than diluted my own taste.

The Inn is probably where those two sides of my life meet most naturally: Italian elegance and a certain discipline of taste, together with the ease, warmth and informality of the Caribbean. I want it to feel beautiful and refined, but never stiff or overdone.

Haute Living: The Inn predates your family, with a history stretching back to the 1960s. When you took ownership, what did you immediately know you wanted to preserve and what did you want to make distinctly your own?
Susanna Addari: The part I knew immediately had to be preserved was the original hillside area around the Terrace. It is built entirely from Antigua green stone and has this extraordinary position overlooking Freeman’s Bay. I still believe the view is unlike that of any other resort on the island.

The Inn already had a personality when we bought it and I never wanted to erase that. The Terrace especially felt as though it had been shaped by time and had simply grown into the landscape.

When we later rebuilt the guest rooms, that architecture became our reference. We wanted the new buildings to feel as though they had always belonged there, preserving the colonial character of the Terrace rather than imposing something different on the property.

Andrew Goodenough, a well-known architect based in Antigua, designed the new rooms. He understood very quickly what Enzo and I had imagined and managed to give it architectural form without losing the original character of the hotel.

Haute Living: The Inn feels much more like a beautiful private home than a traditional resort, from original artwork and antiques to handwritten notes from you to guests. How much of the property is an extension of your own homes and the way you personally like to entertain?
Susanna Addari: The Inn is very much an extension of my home and of the way I like to welcome my guests. I have never believed hospitality should feel performed. It should be thoughtful and personal, but also discreet.

I change things in the rooms regularly, fabrics, artwork, objects, small details, because I see something I love or simply feel a room needs to evolve. The handwritten notes began because so many guests return year after year and notice those changes. I thought it would be nice to tell them what had inspired me and why I had changed something.

At home, I want guests to feel cared for and never fussed over. I want exactly the same at The Inn. To me, the best hospitality is attentive yet unobtrusive, leaving guests completely free.

Haute Living: As an art historian, how do you choose the art, objects and antiques throughout The Inn? Are there particular pieces with stories or personal meaning that you especially love?
Susanna Addari: I have always felt that the interiors of The Inn should look as though they have evolved naturally over time, rather than having been decorated all at once. My background in art history certainly influences the way I choose paintings, objects and antiques, but I am guided just as much by instinct, provenance and the atmosphere a piece creates. I am drawn to things that have character and a sense of history, and I prefer a certain understated elegance to anything that feels overly designed.

Some of the objects that mean the most to me are very personal. In the glass cabinet in the reception area, for example, there is a pair of antique silver candlesticks, together with several other fine pieces of silver, that belonged to my grandmother. She came from an old noble family and the house in which she lived was extraordinarily beautiful and elegant. I grew up surrounded by those objects, so for me they are much more than decorative pieces; they carry memories of a particular world, of the way she lived and entertained, and of a very natural sense of refinement that has always stayed with me.

I like the idea that guests may admire them simply because they are beautiful, without necessarily knowing their story. But for me, having them at The Inn creates a quiet connection between my family history and the character of the hotel. That is really how I approach the entire property: I want it to feel collected rather than decorated, personal rather than staged, and elegant without ever becoming formal or impersonal.

Haute Living: There is a wonderful balance at The Inn between European quiet luxury and the ease of Caribbean life. What does luxury mean to you today and what do you think travelers are increasingly looking for that large luxury hotels sometimes cannot provide?
Susanna Addari: Luxury, for me, begins with elegance, not extravagance or ostentation, but taste, discretion and a sense of grace in the way everything is done. It is about feeling completely at ease and quietly cared for: having the restaurant staff remember your name and how you take your coffee, being able to forget about time and simply let the day unfold, and knowing that your privacy will be respected while everything you need is taken care of, often before you even have to ask.

At The Inn we have five-star standards, of course, but I never want the service to feel formal or rehearsed. Large luxury hotels can offer almost anything; what is much harder to create is the feeling that someone actually knows who you are.

Haute Living: English Harbour has this fascinating intersection of British maritime history, Antiguan culture and a longstanding Italian community drawn here through sailing. What was that community like when you first arrived, and how have you watched English Harbour evolve over the years?
Susanna Addari: I arrived in Antigua in my twenties with my first husband Fabrizio and English Harbour in the late 1980s was a wonderfully eccentric place. You had high society runaways, real rum drinking sailors, adventurers and, yes, the occasional hooligan. We were young and most of us had come because we wanted lives very different from the ones our parents had imagined for us.

The sea was at the centre of everything. We sailed, organized countless full moon parties where we danced barefoot on the beach, drifted in and out of each other’s houses, and rarely planned anything too far ahead. Life felt wonderfully spontaneous then and I think that sense of freedom is what I remember most. Many of us eventually built businesses and raised families here, although I don’t think any of us arrived with such a serious plan.

English Harbour is much more polished and international today. The sailors became yachtsmen, the young outsiders became established members of the community, and that is something to be proud of. But I am also nostalgic for a little of the wildness and spontaneity we had then.

We were very lucky to know English Harbour at that moment in its history.

Haute Living: The Inn is very much a family affair. Tell us a little about your family and the roles they play today. What does it mean to you to see the next generation become part of The Inn’s story and what do you hope they carry forward?
Susanna Addari: I have two children, Roberto and Faye, who were both born in Antigua and now I have three grandchildren, Amaya, Elio and Elisabetta. I am very happy that Robi and Faye, after many years abroad, both chose to return to Antigua and build their own lives and families here.

They went to boarding school in Switzerland and later graduated from excellent universities in the United States. After that they spent some years working in different parts of the world before choosing to come back to Antigua. I think that education and exposure were fundamental. They saw different ways of working, managing businesses and communicating, and they returned with a perspective and an innovative approach that our generation simply did not have when we started.

Roberto has been involved for several years with our sister company Antigua Slipway, our shipyard, and has brought a much more modern approach to its operations and development. Faye became involved with The Inn more recently, after having her two children, and is now developing our in-house Marketing Department which, until then, had never formally existed.

What it matters to me is that they know the history and values of these businesses because they grew up with them, but they are not constrained by them. I trust them to understand what must be preserved and to have the confidence to change what needs to evolve.

That is exactly what I hope the next generation will bring to The Inn.

Haute Living: Food is another place where your Italian heritage meets Antigua. What dishes, rituals or ingredients from your own family traditions have found their way into the guest experience?
Susanna Addari: I have to disappoint the stereotype: although I am Italian, cooking has never been one of my great passions. I have somehow managed to go through life doing remarkably little of it!

So, I cannot claim to have brought a collection of family recipes to the hotel but that does not mean I don’t have very definite opinions about food. It’s quite the opposite. There are certain things I could never imagine not having at The Inn: homemade pasta, proper gelato, and our Tuesday Italian evening, when our Italian chef has the freedom to draw on his own background and creativity.

But The Inn’s culinary identity is certainly not only Italian. We are actually working to broaden the experience further and bring in acclaimed guest chefs for special weeks during the season, each with their own style and point of view. I would like food to become a more important part of the stay, not in a formal or overly elaborate way, but by creating memorable moments around really good cooking, beautiful ingredients, and the pleasure of eating well.

Haute Living: Some of the most memorable luxuries at The Inn are also the most personal: a handwritten note, a beautiful piece of art, knowing the preferences of a guest who comes back year after year. Where do those ideas come from and which small rituals or details are most important to you?
Susanna Addari: I am not a professional hotelier and I have never approached The Inn primarily as a commercial exercise. Of course, it is a business and has to be run properly, but that has never been the part that interested me most.

Travelling and staying in some of the most beautiful hotels in the world has certainly inspired me. I notice details, a gesture of service, an object, the way a room is put together, and I remember the things that make me feel something. But what really drives me at The Inn is my own passion, perhaps even obsession, with detail.

The handwritten notes come from that, as do some of the unusual objects and pieces I choose for the rooms. I don’t want everything to look coordinated for the sake of it; I want it to feel personal, as though each thing was chosen because someone genuinely loved it.

Service works the same way. After a day or two, someone should know how you take your coffee. Housekeeping should understand how you like to use your room. If you return every year, we should remember the things that matter to you. Fresh flowers on the table may seem like a tiny detail, but hotels are really made up of hundreds of small details.

And when those details are right, you feel it.

Haute Living: You have spent decades shaping The Inn rather than turning it into something larger or more commercial. In an era when so many independent hotels are being absorbed into global luxury brands, why has remaining intimate and independent mattered to you?
Susanna Addari: The Inn has never been just a business to me. When my children went away to boarding school and the house suddenly became much quieter, I devoted a great deal of myself to the hotel. I have often said that it became my third child, and in many ways it did.

Enzo supported me completely, and The Inn remains one of the things we built together. Perhaps that is why I have never been interested in making it larger simply for the sake of growth. Bigger is not necessarily better and certainly not for a place like The Inn.

Remaining independent means we can still make decisions because they feel right for the hotel, rather than because they fit a corporate formula. Naturally, the numbers have to work, but they have never been the reason the hotel exists.

I would rather keep The Inn intimate, personal and individual than make it more commercial and risk losing the character that makes people want to return.

Haute Living: After all these years, what still excites you about The Inn? When you look ahead to its next chapter, what do you hope changes and, perhaps more importantly, what do you hope never changes? Any renovations or enhancements we can expect in 2027?
Susanna Addari: What still excites me is that The Inn can continue to evolve without becoming a different hotel. Antigua, and especially English Harbour, has changed enormously. Today our guests can spend the day in complete peace at The Inn and, only a few minutes away, be in the middle of everything happening in English Harbour. I love that contrast.

I am also excited that my children are now involved. I don’t want them, simply, to repeat what I did. Their education, experience and age should bring new ideas and a different perspective. At the same time, there are certain things they understand must never be lost.

Above all, I never want The Inn to feel busy. Space has become a luxury in itself, not only the space around you, but the freedom to let the day unfold as you wish: to read in the shade, swim when the sea calls, linger in a hammock beneath a palm tree, or simply do nothing at all without ever feeling that your time needs to be filled.

In 2027, we will carefully introduce several new experiences: a weekly Champagne and Caviar aperitif, a dedicated Yoga and Pilates deck, Croquet and other lawn games, and a Rum Bar on the sand. Further renovations and enhancements are also planned during our 2027 seasonal closure.

For me, the real test is whether someone who loved The Inn years ago can return and still feel that same immediate sense of recognition. If we can preserve that feeling while allowing the property to evolve naturally over the time, then I think we have got it right.