quite often buy pieces of fur­ni­ture just because I like the look of them and noth­ing else. You could call it a nat­ur­al instinct. This is one of those. Lit­tle did I know what I was get­ting.… The faint burnt/​stamped ink text reads ​“GRANDE ALBER­GO BEL­LA VISTA — LEV­I­CO”. This iden­ti­fies the piece as orig­i­nal prop­er­ty of the Grande Alber­go Bel­la Vista (Grand Hotel Bel­la Vista), a lux­u­ry his­toric hotel locat­ed in the famous ther­mal spa town of Lev­i­co Terme in Trenti­no, North­ern Italy. The Wartime Req­ui­si­tion Stamp. The large cir­cu­lar ink stamp reads ​“KRIEGS­MA­RINE” (Ger­man Navy) around the top bor­der, with ​“LEV­I­CO” stamped across the mid­dle anchor. Fol­low­ing the Ital­ian armistice in Sep­tem­ber 1943, Nazi Ger­many occu­pied North­ern Italy. Due to its inland, seclud­ed val­ley loca­tion away from coastal bomb­ing raids, the resort town of Lev­i­co Terme was select­ed as a major com­mand hub. When the Ger­man mil­i­tary seized these hotels for office space and quar­ters, they inven­to­ried and stamped the exist­ing hotel fur­ni­ture with their offi­cial com­mand seal (Kriegs­ma­rine Lev­i­co) to for­mal­ize mil­i­tary con­trolover the assets. One avail­able £450