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The Italian luxury hospitality group ROMEO Collection, renowned for its innovative vision and commitment to ethical and sustainable luxury, required the renovation of a historic 16th-century palace to become an exclusive 74-room boutique hotel that sets a new standard for urban resorts, embodying the concept of luxury by blending art, architecture, design, gastronomy, and well-being in a timeless setting. Grouppo Roma’s mission is to add value to properties through a deep integration of design, art, and management know-how, capable of meeting the needs of an increasingly aware and demanding clientele.
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The ROMEO Roma Hotel has exceptionally storied surroundings. It is situated on a branch of the city’s Sistine Trident, radiating from the Piazza del Popolo, which in Roman times was the site of the northern gateway into the imperial capital, and the location where the city’s renowned Via Flaminia (leading all the way to the Adriatic Coast) originated. At the centre of the piazza is a towering obelisk from ancient Egypt, which was brought to Rome a decade before the birth of Christ. Inside one of the churches on the piazza are two of the finest masterpieces ever painted by Caravaggio.
Selected for their quality and functionality in improving acoustics and naturally regulating room temperature, the composition of materials within the guest rooms and suites includes Carrara Statuarietto and Nero Marquina marble paired with Makassar ebony, cedar or chestnut woods, and Krion engineered by Porcelenosa. Some suites on the palazzo’s piano nobile incorporate the restored 17th-century frescoes, while suites on higher floors have private terraces with panoramic views of the city. Vaults of delicate brass circuli accentuate the lobby’s lava stone and ebony floors, while Sicilian rock salt, tadelakt (an ancient Moroccan lime-based wall treatment), together with cedar and ash, have been worked with precision to create the interiors of the hotel’s spa.
Like her Baroque predecessors devising heavens in the heights inside their buildings, Hadid had a history of distorting form to make architecture enchanting. Dimensional constraints and functional purpose alone, however, did not solely determine design. In a country with an ethic motivated by beauty, ZHA created an appropriate bellezza for each room.
The hotel’s 74 rooms and suites are worlds of their own. The architects have designed spaces to a point of extreme generosity and abundance, echoing Baroque frescoes, but with architectural forms. Complexity extends from the ceilings and walls to formulate the space of each room. ZHA intensifies materiality, light and form throughout the building to structure space—from room to room, from wall to furniture. There is never a sense of the building ordered by a grid or box or axis or by any other top-down system of control. They build and order design not just from the vaults but the detail, an omni-directional programme of complexity emanating from all surfaces to define space.
The ROMEO Roma Hotel includes 74 rooms and suites of 13 differing categories, an in-house restaurant and a separate restaurant by the globally renowned chef Alain Ducasse, an avant-garde LA SPA by Sisley Paris, and a series of gardens, courtyards and terraces with a swimming pool.
Alfredo Romeo selected Zaha Hadid’s free forms and fluid lines to ensure the hotel achieved an original design, rather than the repetition and resemblance evident in hotel interiors across the globe. “We are transforming a period building with avant-garde designs by Zaha Hadid. It’s a remarkable dialogue between the contemporary and historic architecture,” explains Romeo.
Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) redefined architecture for the 21st century with a repertoire of projects that have captured imaginations across the globe. Creating buildings uniquely tailored to the communities they serve, ZHA has been awarded the highest honours from professional and academic institutions worldwide. Founded by Zaha Hadid, ZHA is one of the world’s most innovative architectural studios—and has been for almost 50 years. These five decades of detailed research are inscribed within ZHA’s buildings which become more spatially inventive, more structurally efficient, more technologically advanced, and more environmentally considerate with each new design. ZHA’s 500 staff in five offices worldwide are currently developing projects in 34 countries across six continents—combining pioneering design solutions with ecologically sound materials and sustainable construction practices to meet the aspirations of each new generation.
