Experimental Roma welcomes its first guests on Saturday 10 October, at 46 Via Ludovisi, just off Via Veneto. It has 82 rooms and suites designed by the interior architect Rodolphe Parente, a restaurant by Giovanni Passerini, a rooftop bar and a suspended swimming pool overlooking the city. On Via Veneto itself, at number 72, the Baglioni Hotel Regina now presents “newly renovated rooms and suites” and a new restaurant and bar, Primiera: two hotel stories in the same week, on the street that Federico Fellini rebuilt at Cinecittà for La dolce vita.
82 rooms in a former bank on Via Ludovisi
Rome is Experimental Group’s second Italian address after Il Palazzo Experimental in Venice, in a portfolio that also counts three hotels in Paris and others in London, the Cotswolds, Ibiza, Menorca, Biarritz and the Alps. The building is, in the group’s words, “a meticulously restored historic former bank building”. Which bank, it does not say. Parente imagined the 82 rooms and suites, and his vision, the group writes, “draws from the fertile contrasts that define Rome’s grandeur”. The restaurant is Ludovisi e Cadore. There, according to Experimental’s announcement, Passerini returns to his roots after years of acclaim in Paris. His kitchen works with the quinto quarto, “the ‘fifth quarter’ of the animal, considered the less noble parts”, with what the hotel calls an elegant approach. Our piece on Ludovisi e Cadore tells his story. On the roof are La Terrasse, the bar, and the suspended pool. The Experimental Cocktail Club Roma completes the picture, described by the group as “a study on the classics, a late-night haunt”.
Primiera and the new rooms at the Regina
On Via Veneto, the Baglioni Hotel Regina has changed its rooms and its restaurant. The hotel, a member of The Leading Hotels of the World, describes the rooms and suites as “thoughtfully reimagined with refined tones”. Italia a Tavola, which reported the relaunch on 7 October, names the suppliers: made-to-measure furniture by Molteni&C and curtains by Rubelli. The restaurant is new. Primiera is, in the hotel’s words, a place “where the contemporary plays with Italian and Roman tradition”, and its own line is “Simple, refined, made to be shared”. The dinner menu runs from rigatoni alla carbonara, finished at the table with guanciale, pecorino and egg yolk, to a cacio e pepe risotto with lime zest and sautéed scampi. Roman, then, with a twist. The snack menu has a bao of braised oxtail, and the bar promises “Aperitivo and beyond, with a contemporary twist”. According to Italia a Tavola, Davide Modesti is the consulting chef and Luciano Sarzi Sartori the executive chef, and Primiera is already serving, although its official inauguration is still to come. At the top of the house, the Roman Penthouse remains: 270 square metres inside, a private terrace of 290 on several levels, three bedrooms, a Jacuzzi with chromotherapy and a private gym. The penthouse itself is not new. The building is Liberty-style, according to The Leading Hotels of the World, and was once the home of Queen Margherita of Savoy; the hotel was allowed to add “Regina” to its name in recognition of the kindness shown to her.
Via Veneto, from 1894 to La dolce vita
Rome’s official tourism site dates the opening of Via Veneto to 1894, as a broad Umbertine avenue and the main street of the city’s most luxurious district. It was first named after the region, and in 1919, after the First World War, it took the name of the battle of Vittorio Veneto. The same source dates the Excelsior to 1906, and the Majestic, designed by Gaetano Koch, was the first hotel built on the street. Via Ludovisi recalls the villa of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, who bought the land in 1621, the tourism office adds. Its fame belongs to the Dolce Vita years, when Hollywood actors filled the street’s clubs, restaurants and hotels. Fellini rebuilt it at Cinecittà for La dolce vita, released in 1960. At the top, beyond Porta Pinciana, Villa Borghese begins.
“The street is one of the symbols of the film: every evening the movie stars meet at the Café de Paris.” Turismo Roma, the city’s official tourism site, on Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960).
The Luxury.it perspective
Two companies are reading the same street in two different ways. Experimental Group takes Via Veneto by night, with a cocktail club, a rooftop and a chef who cooks the fifth quarter in a former bank. The Regina takes it at the table, with a carbonara finished in front of the guest, in a Liberty building where a queen once lived. One is new, the other renewed. Both have chosen the same stretch of Rome. Both quote Fellini without copying him. For a first look, start at Porta Pinciana and walk down: the Regina is on Via Veneto, and Experimental Roma is just off it, on Via Ludovisi.
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