Hotel Splendide Royal

Rome doesn’t lack for drama, but few stages are set quite as extravagantly as the Hotel Splendide Royal. A one-time 19th-century palazzo, now gleaming in Roberto Naldi Collection polish, it greets you with sweeping marble staircases, gilt-framed canvases, and chandeliers that seem to have slipped off the set of a Visconti film. Yet, for all its grandeur, the mood is more private club than museum, serene, intimate, and refreshingly unstuffy

Mornings here begin with cappuccinos kissed by sunlight streaming over Villa Borghese, best savoured on Mirabelle’s seventh-floor terrace while the city unfurls below. The rooftop is pure Roman theatre: domes, spires, and a Vatican view that turns aperitivo hour into a lesson in the art of la dolce vita. Step back inside and the hotel’s baroque suites, draped in silk and marble, deliver both cinematic glamour and the hush of a sanctuary, an intoxicating balance for those who want the city at their feet but not under their skin

What lingers, though, is the grace note of hospitality. Staff glide rather than bustle, attuned to the rhythm of your stay, there when you need them, invisible when you don’t. It’s this quiet choreography, paired with the splendour of place, that makes the Splendide Royal not just a hotel, but an invitation to live Rome in slow, indulgent focus.