Here the customer has been at home for a hundred years
Who today stops to observe our structure, hardly thinks that there is a secular history behind this sign. But it is enough to cross the threshold to understand how this place has very solid roots, as the professionalism and our courtesy in welcoming us immediately make our guests feel at home, qualities that certainly cannot be improvised and that instead, they are necessarily acquired and refined only over the years. - And years without showing them - we have many at the Hotel Paoli.
The young wife Maria, having to provide for the support of her two children, started to work with good spirits in the tavern that in the village was immediately nicknamed by all "Alla Vedova", a sign that turned out to be stainless, so much so that since 1926 it is has come down to the present day, since the restaurant still bears the name of "Antica Trattoria Alla Vedova".
Just over ten years after the death of Francesco Paoli, another world conflict loomed on the horizon, with its heavy burden of socio-economic consequences. But the "Alla Vedova" tavern survived those dramatic years unscathed, also because most of the customers who frequented the restaurant were the military who were stationed in the area.
After the war, the activity found new life during the reconstruction period. In 1953, in fact, the Paoli family also opened a grocery store and haberdashery. Inside it sold practically everything, since the operation had even 23 commodity licenses, ranging from tractors to tiles, transforming this place into a sort of large emporium where the local population continued to obtain supplies until 1989, when the the advent of large supermarkets made the activity no longer profitable.
In the meantime, however, the rest of the structure had grown. In fact, after the opening of the first bar in 1960, 14 rooms had been created for the hotel in 1973, while in 1974 there had been a first extension of the dining rooms, which would have been followed by another even more important one in 1997. as regards the spaces of the restaurant (which since 1986 had also become a pizzeria), both for the hotel, with double the rooms and the birth of the Hotel Paoli (3 stars) as today we can admire it under the guidance, right from the June 2018, by Matteo and Elisa Paoli who, in the wake of the family tradition, immediately wanted to offer their customers something new, or a colorful baby area, equipped with houses, slides, swings, mattresses that has met with an amazing success not only among the little ones, but also by parents who can now perfectly reconcile the desire to eat outside with the need to let off steam of their children which in other accommodation facilities could be problematic.
If on the one hand over the decades the Paoli family has put in place a series of better ones to the structure, what has remained unchanged in this century of history is the approach to the customer who is considered here to be "one of the house", which explains the great affection from customers, with real records like that of a bourgeois gentleman who has been staying at the structure with the whole family for 45 years.
E la storia continuò anche per la struttura “Alla Vedova” dove in tempi più recenti si sono esibiti altri gruppi di caratura nazionale e internazionale, come Africa Unite, Persiana Jones, Generale, Sud Sound System, Train to roots, Rebel Rootz, Mooseek, Anansi, George Mc Anthony, Modena City Ramblers e tanti altri ancora. Tanta musica in tutti questi anni “Alla Vedova”, ma anche tanto sport. Oltre ai tornei di calcio, ai raduni di mezzi pesanti, moto e auto d’epoca, questo luogo è legato al pattinaggio su ghiaccio – la prima pista fu aperta nel 1971 – e ai cavalli, con l’apertura nel 1983 di un centro ippico dove, oltre alle lezioni di equitazione, si svolgono gare di salti ostacoli anche a livello nazionale o gare con cavalli dei ranch della zona. L’Hotel Paoli è stato anche il set per una puntata con i cavalli di Bim Bum Bam mandata in onda nel 1992 su Canale 5, nonché, recentemente, per le riprese del film Exitus uscito proprio in questi giorni nelle sale cinematografiche di tutta Italia. Insomma, l’Hotel Paoli vanta una storia secolare che ben potrebbe assomigliare ad un film, ma la realtà – come si sa – non è mai tutta rosea, anche la medaglia più bella presenta sempre un suo rovescio, come ad esempio accade nell’estate del 2017 quando un furioso incendio distrusse completamente il maneggio.
