Hotel Romeo Roma: ZHA's palazzo conversion is a love letter to excess

Approaching the unremarkable facade of Palazzo Capponi, just off Rome’s Piazza del Popolo, there is little sign of the contemporary, beyond a small canopy above its arched doorway. Step through, though, and serpentine interventions are everywhere, thanks to its transformation by Zaha Hadid Architects into the latest high-luxury offering from the Romeo Collection hotel group. 

Sweeping backlit strips of slim steel run along the ceiling of the entrance corridor, leading past a restored staircase, and through to a small courtyard. Fitted with a retractable roof and latticed metal arches springing from the floor, this central hub houses a glossy red piano, corneous black ZHA furniture and a water-feature-cum-artwork swathing an entire wall to ostentatious effect. 

Hotel Romeo Roma was among the last projects initiated by Zaha Hadid, kicking off in 2015, and overseen to completion by ZHA director Paola Cattarin, whose previous assignments include project director for the Salerno Maritime Terminal and a variety of masterplans across China. 

Curves dominate the 16th-century mansion’s makeover. Almost all interiors are encased in a sinuous second skin, hiding the original orthogonal rooms with sweeping surfaces inspired by baroque vaults – and by the palazzo’s surviving fabric – to ‘create a dialogue between past and present’, in Cattarin’s words. 

Opulent interiors cloak listed structures

At the request of Alfredo Romeo, founder of the Romeo Collection, natural materials (always high-quality, usually glossy, and occasionally fused together as a single surface) prevail over the practice’s usual synthetic options. Achieving Hadid’s trademark three-dimensional futurism in marble, basalt, woods, steel and expanses of ebony veneer required exquisite craftsmanship (including technology from the yacht industry), specialist suppliers and serious outlay.

This cladding serves purposes beyond beauty and a unique selling point. Despite wholesale alteration over the years, the palazzo is rigorously listed, including its two 1950s extensions, which date from its previous guise as a government office. The preservation and reinforcement of all structural elements necessitated external services, now hidden in the cavity between old and new. 

This retention of original fabric also resulted in a tricky jigsaw of diminutive spaces. Various ploys are used to avoid potential claustrophobia, from oculi punctured through marble walls to partitions consisting of veneered fins, enhancing sightlines and offering the illusion of space. The new surfaces are also intended to regulate ventilation, acoustics and temperature.

Ensuring overall coherence while giving each public area a specific character was a challenge, particularly with the curve as a single dominant gesture. The natural distortions of the vaults created by the palazzo’s irregular geometries, and the resulting haphazard intersections, provide one solution; the diversity of materials another. 

The womb-like reception, with its eye-catching fronds clad in brass scales amid cantilevered desks of lava stone and ebony, is among the most persuasive. Another eye-catcher, despite its limited practicality, is the small cigar room. On a well-trodden route, and with two glass walls, it is a fishbowl for occupants of its two low leather chairs – although the skill with which dark veneers are shaped around layers of recessed shelving is undeniable. 

Far more important, however, is the atmospheric restaurant – chef Alain Ducasse’s first in Rome – with its carefully planned kitchen fully exposed to diners. Long, thin slices curve through the low Macassar ebony roof, and microlights behind highlight its rippling surface. Across the courtyard, the bistro takes a similar approach, but with additional height creating towering aisles, with a touch of rainforest thrown in.

This description of extraordinary, expensive and high-gloss interiors could go on. The aim, as Romeo says, is ‘to make the most beautiful hotel in the world – one that looks like no other’. 

Rediscovered Roman bottega and restored frescoes

It is something of a relief, in fact, to reach the relatively subdued spa, featuring a glowing wall of Sicilian rock salt, while the soft ash cladding the adjoining gym is similarly welcome, offering acoustic and visual moderation. But the long slim pool alongside, running under intimidating dark arches, presages an alternative attraction for residents. 

As it flows out into the hotel’s surprisingly large garden, the pool transforms into a glass-bottomed arc of water, enabling swimmers to paddle above the ruins of a Roman bottega beneath. The unexpected discovery, excavation and protection of this 2,000-year-old workshop during renovations added considerable time and expense, but also an additional depth of meaning to the conversion. One of the resulting finds, a head of Livia Drusilla, is on display alongside the red piano. Once studied, more artefacts will join it.

Art is a feature of Hotel Romeo Roma. On one side of the garden, a typically glamorous white ZHA staircase is extruded from an impending green wall, leading up to a raised terrace with a flamboyant lacquered mural of the Piazza Popolo by Ugo Nespolo. Such artworks from Alfredo Romeo’s collection permeate the hotel, ranging from 19th-century landscapes to metaphysical scenes, lingering on Pop Art and monochrome nude photography. 

Of the 74 rooms and suites, most are in keeping with the overall aesthetic – meandering wood surrounds both orthogonal mattresses and curving hot tubs, while fireplaces split through the veneer cladding to produce smoke-mimicking steam. Five suites on the piano nobile, however, boast restored frescoes, some dating back to the 17th century. 

In-your-face excess

Two even have mezzanines (reached by perilous Krion staircases, incorporating sculptural bathtubs and weighing three tonnes in total), which give intimate bedtime views of Roman campagna and caryatids. One also opens onto the palazzo’s facade, providing access to the two heraldic statues perched in alcoves above its doorway.  

What to make of it all? The stated goal is a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’, but this is not really what Hotel Romeo Rome achieves. It is in-your-face, all-embracing, ambitious, excessive, and distinct from Rome’s traditional hotel offering. It may be disquieting – as is all extreme luxury – and it would be easy to be sarcastic. But that would be to miss the point.

Later this year, another Hotel Romeo will be launched in Massa Lubrense, just south of Sorrento, this time designed by Kengo Kuma. The group’s ambition is hospitality with a big point of difference and industry-topping rates. Leaving a hostage to fortune in a high-risk business, it seems to have found a market – although a return on investment may prove more difficult to attain. 

In numbers 

Rooms and suites 74 
External garden 800m² 
Gallery with preserved bottega 90m²
Applications for building permissions 230