Zaha Hadid's formal vocabulary — those liquefied surfaces, the macassar ebony veneers bent into aerodynamic headboard formations, the polished-steel ceiling ribs that curl overhead like the interior of some vast marine creature — was rarely asked to coexist with a neoclassical Roman palazzo. At ROMEO Roma, which fills a six-storey nineteenth-century building steps from Piazza del Popolo, that tension is precisely the point. The exterior presents a composed, cream-rendered facade with stone-framed windows and a rooftop garden cascading greenery over the cornice, entirely orthodox in its Roman context. Step inside and the register shifts completely. Hadid Architects designed the 74-room hotel's interiors, completed in 2021, around an uncompromising material palette: macassar ebony floors laid in dramatic book-matched stripes, high-gloss lacquered surfaces, and custom furniture whose profiles dissolve from flat plane into sculptural form. The restaurant is the most concentrated expression of this approach — ribbed steel panels wrap the ceiling in overlapping bands, table settings in crisp white linen anchored beneath the metallic turbulence above. Guest suites extend the language further, with open-plan bath configurations visible through glass partitions and beds framed by carved ebony headwalls that carry the weight of autonomous sculpture. The interior courtyard, by contrast, offers deliberate relief: a living green wall, woven-rope terrace chairs, and grey stone paving that draws the building back toward its Roman surroundings without fully releasing the tension Hadid spent her career perfecting.

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