Casa Alchimia’s elegant Colonial exterior suggests a classic Maine inn experience, but everything inside defies expectations, save for the plastic Bean boots on the room-key chains.

Vividly upholstered sofas swoop and swoosh, abstract artworks intrigue with bold colors and forms, and living areas flow freely from one bright, streamlined space to the next. “We cannot compete with old New England style because we don’t know it,” innkeeper Giampiero Bonacini says. “But if you want to find something very Italian in Maine, this is it.”