At number 9 Via del Babuino, where the street meets the northern arc of Piazza del Popolo, a neoclassical palazzo that once sheltered Picasso, Cocteau, and the young Gogol was returned to Roman society in 2000 as Hotel de Russie, its rusticated travertine facade and wrought-iron balconies restored under the direction of Rocco Forte Hotels with interiors by Tommaso Ziffer. The building's history as a favored address for artists and intellectuals gave Ziffer his central brief: less grand hotel, more cultivated private residence, with a palette of sage, taupe, and warm stone running through all 120 rooms and suites. The genius of the property is its secret garden — a sequence of terraced levels climbing the Pincian Hill behind the building, fragrant with clipped box spheres, citrus trees, and stone balustrades draped in wisteria, the whole arrangement visible through the arched entrance passage as you arrive. Ziffer's interiors carry this botanical vocabulary inside: rooms are dressed in olive velvets and toile de Jouy-style fabrics, brass swing-arm reading lamps positioned over upholstered headboards embroidered with the double-headed eagle crest, dark-stained case furniture trimmed with hammered hardware. The bar lounge, anchored by a large contemporary canvas of Rome and flanked by white plaster casts on plinths, sets contemporary art in deliberate tension with classical form — a conversation the hotel has been sustaining, quietly and with considerable assurance, since the day it reopened.

No travel notes provided yet.

No description provided yet.