Hotel de la Ville

Via Sistina leaves the church of Trinità dei Monti at the top of the Spanish Steps and runs straight towards Santa Maria Maggiore, as Sixtus V laid it out in the 1580s. An 18th-century palazzo on its first stretch has been a hotel for a century. Rocco Forte Hotels took it, closed it for three years of works and reopened it as Hotel de la Ville in Rome in May 2019, the group's second house in the city after the Hotel de Russie at the foot of the hill on Via del Babuino.

History

The building belongs to the 18th century, when the streets around the Spanish Steps filled with the foreigners of the Grand Tour, and it became a hotel in the 1920s under the name it still carries. For decades in the late 20th century it was run by InterContinental. Rocco Forte, whose father Charles Forte had been born in Italy, bought the lease and began the restoration in 2016. The reopening in 2019 gave the group a house in each of the two districts a visitor to Rome wants: the Russie by the Piazza del Popolo and the Ville above the Steps.

Architecture and design

Tommaso Ziffer designed the interiors with Olga Polizzi, Rocco Forte's sister and the group's director of design, around the Grand Tour. The references are 18th-century: engravings of Roman ruins, striped and figured fabrics, lacquer, Roman reds and ochres, and busts and antiquities in the corridors. The courtyard at the centre of the building is a garden for drinks. On the roof, the terrace of the Cielo bar looks across the domes of the centre to St Peter's.

Rooms and suites

There are 104 rooms and suites. The rooms on the upper floors look over the Spanish Steps or across the roofs of the centro storico, and the top suites have terraces of their own. Each floor follows a different colour from the Ziffer palette. Among luxury hotels in Rome it is one of the few with the Steps directly below the windows.

Dining

Fulvio Pierangelini, the chef who oversees the Italian restaurants of Rocco Forte, directs the kitchens. Mosaico is the fine-dining restaurant; Da Sistina, on the street, is the trattoria with a Roman menu; Julep Herbal & Vermouth Bar makes drinks from Italian vermouths and herbs; and Cielo, the rooftop bar, serves aperitivo and dinner with the city below.

Wellness

The Irene Forte Spa, named after Rocco Forte's daughter and using her product line, has treatment rooms, a sauna and a gym. There is no pool.

Weddings and events

The hotel has meeting rooms and takes receptions in the courtyard and on the roof terrace. Weddings in Rome tend to hold the ceremony in a church or at the Campidoglio and the reception at the hotel, and the Ville, with the Steps at its door and Cielo on its roof, is used that way. The Hotel de Russie, with its larger garden, takes the bigger parties for the same group.

Location

The hotel is at the top of the Spanish Steps, with the Trinità dei Monti church and the Villa Medici beside it and the Pincio gardens and Villa Borghese behind. The Spagna metro station is five minutes on foot, Termini station about 15 minutes by taxi. Fiumicino airport is about 45 minutes by car and Ciampino about 35. The shops of Via Condotti are at the bottom of the Steps.