The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
THE OTHER BIG HITTERS OF THE HOTEL BOOM
PALAZZO VILON A baroque masterpiece that has been given a brilliantly discreet makeover. This three-bedroom exclusive-use annexe to the neighbouring Hotel Vilòn occupies 10,000 sq ft of the exquisitely renovated Palazzo Borghese. The current Borghese prince and princess live upstairs; you might well bump into them among the citrus trees and statuary in the inner courtyard.
PALAZZO RIPETTA Originally a convent, later a hotel (renovated in the 1960s by Luigi Moretti, who designed the Watergate in Washington DC) Palazzo Ripetta is now a freshly renovated and fabulously reinvented hotel. Its 17th-century walls enclose a world-within-a-world courtyard; the interiors are vivid, lavish and stuffed with works of art; there’s a fantastic restaurant, San Baylon, with an adjoining bar where you can ask for a cocktail to match the colour of the 1970s New York graffiti on the walls.
INTERCONTINENTAL AMBASCIATORI PALACE Difficult to imagine that this chicly gleaming place on Via Veneto was ever a library, but so it once was, for the use of bookishly inclined staff and guests of the nearby American Embassy. It retains an intriguing American connection, too, in its outpost of Manhattan’s fashionable Scarpetta restaurant – classic Roman cuisine, New York-ese style.
ROME EDITION Those floor-to-ceiling lobby curtains, like emerald-green waterfalls. Wow. Say what you will about the architecture of the Fascist period, it serves as a marvellous backdrop for all kinds of interiordesign drama, and Ian Schrager’s whizzkids have had a field day here.
MAMA SHELTER ROMA An interesting outlier, geographically and stylistically. A nondescript tower two minutes from Cipro metro station, beyond the Vatican. Most Romans live in unglamorous post-war suburbs; this is one of them, but exploring it is more fun than you might expect. Inside, there are cartoon goddesses on the ceilings, emperors and pizzas woven into the carpet and footballers’ mugshots on the walls. The rooms are inexpensive, but the views of St Peter’s Basilica are priceless.
ONES TO WATCH… Look out, in the weeks and months to come, for the latest openings: Palazzo Roma, from the Shedir Collection, responsible for the astonishing Palazzo Vilòn, mentioned above; Romeo al Babuoni (the late Zaha Hadid’s last hotel project); and, down the line, Nobu and the Rosewood (both giving further impetus to the revival of Via Veneto), and the Four Seasons (already being touted as Rome’s “first six-star hotel”).