Rome, From Above

High above the Spanish Steps, Hotel de la Ville has opened a new private penthouse surrounded by almost 400 square metres of terraces

Rome has always rewarded the person willing to look up. Domes emerge unexpectedly at the end of narrow streets. Bell towers interrupt the roofline. Stone angels stand above bridges, saints occupy façades and church lanterns appear between apartment buildings washed in ochre and terracotta. From street level, the city reveals itself in fragments. Climb high enough, however, and those fragments begin to connect.

From the upper floors of Hotel de la Ville, Rome becomes almost cartographic. The hotel occupies an 18th century palazzo on Via Sistina, immediately above the Spanish Steps, placing it at one of the highest points in the historic centre. From here, centuries of architecture appear compressed into a single landscape of tiled roofs, church domes, monuments and distant hills.

It is this Rome that provides the premise for Hotel de la Ville's newest addition. The De La Ville Panoramic Penthouse occupies the seventh and eighth floors, with six bedrooms, three living rooms and six bathrooms arranged across approximately 360 square metres. Yet its defining space exists beyond the walls. Almost 400 square metres of private terraces wrap around the residence, effectively creating an open air home suspended above the city.

The scale is considerable, accommodating up to twelve guests, but the more interesting idea lies in what Hotel de la Ville has chosen to do with its position. Rather than treating the panorama as something simply to admire over breakfast, the hotel has built an experience around understanding the city from above.

A Palazzo Above the Spanish Steps

Hotel de la Ville reopened under Rocco Forte Hotels in 2019 following an extensive transformation of the historic building. Designer Tommaso Ziffer worked with Rocco Forte's Director of Design, Olga Polizzi, using the Grand Tour as a starting point for interiors that reference the generations of European travellers who arrived in Rome in search of art, antiquity and culture.

That history feels particularly relevant on Via Sistina. The street runs along the upper edge of the Spanish Steps, one of the places where Rome's relationship with international travel has been visible for centuries. The Piazza di Spagna became closely associated with foreigners undertaking the Grand Tour, and the neighbourhood attracted artists, writers and wealthy travellers who came to experience the city through its classical ruins, Renaissance palaces, churches and collections.

Hotel de la Ville's location therefore carries a certain historical logic. It is a contemporary luxury hotel occupying a site in a district that has been receiving international travellers for generations.

The Panoramic Penthouse extends that relationship vertically. Its terraces are designed as genuine living spaces rather than narrow balconies, with enough room for private dining, aperitivo and gatherings above the rooftops. From this height, the dense historic centre begins to reveal its geography. Rome's monuments no longer arrive sequentially as they do while walking. Different centuries occupy the same field of vision.

That change in perspective inspired Above and Beyond, an experience developed with Italian cultural travel specialist Imago Artis Travel, founded by art historians and named Virtuoso's Best On Site Partner in 2025. The programme is available to suite guests and uses Rome's elevated spaces as a route through parts of the city that conventional sightseeing rarely reaches.

The Rome Above Rome

The experience begins by moving away from the obvious viewpoints. Imago Artis describes a journey through hidden foundations, forgotten frescoes and rooftops, moving upwards through layers of the city until terracotta tiles, ancient temples and Baroque domes become the landscape. The precise locations are deliberately not all disclosed in the programme, preserving the private access on which the experience depends.

It is a particularly effective way of approaching Rome because this is a city built literally upon itself. Ancient Rome survives beneath medieval churches. Renaissance palazzi absorbed earlier structures. Baroque architects altered façades and interiors while retaining older foundations. Excavations beneath seemingly ordinary buildings can reveal streets, houses, temples or walls belonging to another version of the city entirely.

Above ground, a parallel archaeology exists across the skyline. Rome's roofscape records the same accumulation of centuries through domes, campanili, terraces and tiles. From a rooftop, the Pantheon can suddenly be understood in relation to later churches around it. The enormous dome of St Peter's becomes a geographical anchor. The white mass of the Vittoriano rises above an overwhelmingly earth toned city, while countless smaller cupolas reveal just how deeply ecclesiastical architecture shapes Rome's silhouette.

Above and Beyond makes that elevated landscape the destination itself.

A Hidden Terrace

One stop takes guests onto a concealed terrace on one of Rome's historic hills, within an elegant residential district associated in the programme with a former “Sacred Mount”. Here, the experience centres on an optical illusion created by the relationship between architecture, landscape and viewpoint.

The hotel intentionally leaves the precise terrace unnamed, and that discretion is important. Rome's most celebrated viewpoints are hardly secrets. The Pincian Hill above Piazza del Popolo fills at sunset. Gianicolo looks across the entire historic centre. The terraces of the Vittoriano provide some of the clearest views of the Roman Forum and surrounding city.

The appeal of privileged access is therefore not simply getting higher.

It is finding a viewpoint that still retains intimacy. That idea reflects a wider shift occurring at the upper end of urban hospitality. Once a traveller can book a private guide to the Vatican, reserve the city's best restaurants and arrange a car to virtually any monument, conventional access ceases to feel particularly rare. Hotels increasingly compete through relationships, specialist knowledge and the ability to open doors that cannot simply be unlocked through a standard ticket.

In Rome, where extraordinary spaces remain concealed behind private palazzo doors and unassuming façades, that form of access can fundamentally change the experience of the city.

Inside the Palazzo

The journey later enters an historic aristocratic palazzo for what Hotel de la Ville calls the Noble Cocktail Soirée. Guests ascend via a private historic elevator before emerging onto a rooftop from which several of Rome's most recognisable monuments become visible together. St Peter's Basilica, Castel Sant'Angelo and the Altare della Patria appear across the skyline as the light begins to change towards sunset.

Rome at this hour has its own palette. Travertine moves from cream towards gold. Terracotta becomes deeper. Domes that appear solid beneath the midday sun soften against the sky. As evening approaches, the city's relationship with artificial light gradually takes over and illuminated monuments begin to separate themselves from the surrounding roofscape.

The cocktail itself is almost secondary to the setting.

This is where Above and Beyond becomes less about sightseeing and more about inhabiting Rome temporarily from positions usually unavailable to visitors. Instead of standing beneath a palazzo and studying its façade, the guest is inside it. Instead of looking upwards towards a terrace, the city is being observed from one. That inversion continues back at Hotel de la Ville.

Dinner Above the City

The route eventually returns to the Panoramic Penthouse, where a dedicated butler presents an aperitivo conceived around the cooking of Fulvio Pierangelini, Creative Director of Food for Rocco Forte Hotels.

Pierangelini occupies an unusual place in contemporary Italian gastronomy. His former restaurant Gambero Rosso in San Vincenzo became one of Italy's most influential restaurants, earning two Michelin stars before closing in 2008. His cooking became known for extracting extraordinary depth from apparently simple ingredients, an approach that has subsequently shaped his work across the Rocco Forte portfolio.

At Hotel de la Ville, food is already an important part of the property. Cielo occupies the rooftop, while Mosaico, Julep and Café Ginori create different dining and drinking environments throughout the hotel. The penthouse introduces the possibility of removing the restaurant entirely and bringing the experience into a private residence.

Here, the terrace changes character again. During the day it is an observation point. At sunset it becomes an aperitivo setting. After dark, the surrounding city recedes and Rome's illuminated monuments begin to punctuate the horizon. The programme then offers one final change in perspective.

When Rome Goes Dark

Guests can remain outside for a private stargazing experience from the penthouse's Astro Bed, looking upwards from a terrace that has spent the day encouraging them to look outwards. Alternatively, an art and history specialist can lead a Skyline Tour, tracing monuments across the horizon from the Quirinale towards the Vatican.

There is something almost contradictory about stargazing in the centre of Rome. This is hardly a dark sky destination, and the city below produces its own considerable glow. Yet astronomy belongs to Rome's history as surely as architecture does.

The Vatican Observatory traces its institutional roots to the late 16th century, when Pope Gregory XIII established a committee to study the scientific data required for reform of the calendar. The resulting Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582. Centuries later, the Observatory became formally established at the Vatican before eventually moving much of its observational work to Castel Gandolfo and, later, Arizona as Rome's growing artificial light made astronomical observation increasingly difficult.

From a Roman rooftop, the sky therefore becomes another layer in a city already saturated with them.

The Grand Tour, Reconsidered

Hotel de la Ville's fascination with this idea of discovery is particularly appropriate given the Grand Tour references woven through its interiors. For wealthy European travellers of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, Rome was often the intellectual and emotional climax of a long journey through Europe. They came to study antiquity, collect art, learn languages, encounter architecture and acquire the cultural fluency expected of an educated elite.

The modern luxury traveller obviously arrives under very different circumstances. Rome can be reached in hours rather than months. Its masterpieces can be researched before departure in extraordinary detail. Almost every major monument has been photographed from every conceivable angle.

That abundance of information has created a curious problem for luxury travel. Seeing something is no longer necessarily the same as discovering it. Above and Beyond responds by returning to one of travel's oldest pleasures: access accompanied by knowledge. An art historian, an unopened door, a private terrace or an unexpected viewpoint can make an extraordinarily familiar city momentarily unfamiliar again.

The Panoramic Penthouse functions within the same philosophy. Its appeal is not simply the number of bedrooms or the size of its terraces, although both place it firmly within Rome's highest tier of hotel accommodation. The real luxury is spatial. In a city where the historic centre can feel intensely public, the penthouse creates an unusually large private territory above it.

Rome at Eye Level

Hotel de la Ville itself contains 104 rooms and suites within its 18th century palazzo, with Ziffer and Polizzi's interiors drawing on the visual language of the Grand Tour rather than attempting a literal historical reconstruction. The hotel also houses the Irene Forte Spa and a collection of restaurants and bars, while its position above Piazza di Spagna places Via Condotti, Villa Borghese, the Trevi Fountain and much of central Rome within walking distance.

Yet proximity has never been Rome's only challenge. The city is almost overwhelmingly rich in things worth seeing. A first visit can become a race between the Colosseum, Pantheon, Vatican Museums, St Peter's Basilica, Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navona, leaving little space for the quieter discoveries that often become more memorable.

Returning travellers face the opposite problem. They know the monuments. What they increasingly seek is another way of encountering them. Hotel de la Ville's new proposition understands that distinction. The Panoramic Penthouse does not attempt to compete with Rome's architecture. It places the guest in conversation with it. Above and Beyond then leaves the hotel and searches for other elevated perspectives, moving through private spaces before returning to the same roofscape after dark.

The result is a journey measured less in kilometres than in height. Rome begins beneath the feet, among foundations and frescoes. It rises through palazzi and historic elevators, crosses terraces and roof tiles, reaches domes and bell towers and finally ends beneath the night sky. For a city visited by millions and documented for centuries, finding a genuinely different perspective is no small achievement. Sometimes it simply requires climbing high enough to see how everything connects.