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This article is part of a guide to Rome from FT Globetrotter
In a year that has seen legions of luxury-hotel brands hit Rome, the Edition stands out for its central yet peaceful location, jungly courtyard garden and inventive food. A few steps from Via Veneto and a 10-minute walk from the Trevi Fountain, the hotel is the first Italian outpost for the Edition brand “conceived, concepted and programmed” by Ian Schrager — boutique hotel pioneer and co-founder of Studio 54.
Like its sibling hotels from Miami Beach to Dubai, the Rome Edition occupies a landmark building: a marble-swathed, side-street bank built in the 1940s by developer Cesare Pascoletti and architect Marcello Piacentini. Today, the facade is cloaked with evergreen jasmine; inside, a courtyard bursts with plants and trees — 400 species found in traditional palazzo gardens, including camphor, gardenia, mint and camellia — while a living wall is so verdant I had to check whether or not it’s fake (it’s not).
The lobby, always the heart of a Schrager hotel, made me gasp with its soaring, seven-metre-high ceilings and travertine floors, dramatically emphasised with floor-to-ceiling emerald-green velvet curtains. The custom-made supersized, off-white sofas and rosewood-and-white-leather armchairs are almost too immaculate to sit on, but comfortable when you do — just don’t get rest your feet on the low, Manuel Coltri-designed coffee tables, as I did, and was promptly told off.
It’s worth skipping the lift for a glimpse of the hotel’s central staircase — an impressive if austere stretch of rare cipollino marble, and an original feature of the bank building. The quiet luxe vibe of the lobby continues upstairs. Panelled with walnut wood, the rooms have king beds with leather headboards, cream furniture and minimal art; our Superior room had a single photograph by Alberto Alicata — something of a relief after a day experiencing Rome’s OTT frescoes and sculptures.
Italian products such as Bomba aramo and limoncello by Silvio Carta, chocolate by local producer Said and the hotel’s own Tritone beer join the regulars in the minibar. Our bathroom was clad in grey peperino stone — a volcanic tuff local to the area — and stocked with bespoke products by New York brand Le Labo. The woody scent, also used in candles, infuses the entire hotel.
The hotel has stiff local competition on the restaurant front — including Ristorante Moma, a two-minute stroll away, and Roscioli, a 25-minute walk, past the Trevi Fountain — but Anima is well worth staying home for. Appropriately for this ex-bank, the head chef is ex-financier Paola Colucci, who also runs the female-led Roman restaurant Pianostrada with her daughters. At breakfast, the avocado toast was strewn with radishes, red onion, dill, green tomatoes, rose petals and — elevating the ubiquitous dish to a new, Instagrammable level — gold dust. For dinner, I particularly enjoyed the unctuous taglioni with red shrimp.
There’s also a choice of bars. Off the lobby are the all-green-marble Jade Bar and the crepuscular Punch Room, with its wine-coloured velvet sofas. On the seventh-floor rooftop, views of the Pantheon are accompanied by an 11-metre swimming pool and yet another bar (The Roof, which was not yet open on my visit; nor were the spa and fitness centre). But during my summer stay, the terrace bar with its profusion of plants was the place to be: a popular spot with the mainly American guests (Edition has five hotels in North America) — groups of friends in their 50s and families with teenage children. Its Santa Margarita cocktail was the must-order, a dangerously light and refreshing mix of tequila, lime and cardamom.
At a glance:
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Good for: Foodies who want to be close to the action but not caught up in it
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Not so good for: Travellers who don’t tolerate service snafus. During our stay a couple of weeks into the hotel’s soft opening, we found — with a few exceptions — the staff a little brusque, and not as helpful as they might have been when it came to simple requests like early-morning coffees and restaurant bookings
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FYI: If you’d like to escape the crowds at the usual tourist-site suspects, you can book one of the hotel’s private tours and snoop around a private palazzo, or visit a restorer’s studio and see a Caravaggio coming back to life
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Rooms and suites: 74 rooms and 17 suites
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Double: From €1,119
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Address: Salita di San Nicola da Tolentino 14, 00187 Rome
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Website; Directions
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