Palazzo Roma

We landed in Rome in the middle of February, somewhat bleary-eyed from a long day but grateful to be back in Italy, one of my favourite countries in the world. As is customary for my arrival in Rome, I immediately called Al Moro from the tarmac to check if they had a table for dinner. 'No later than 10.30pm!' shouted the host down the phone. I suspect she may have had a long day too. Much to her frustration, we actually arrived at 10.34pm but we managed to negotiate our way in, finding the most gorgeous table waiting for us, replete with a bottle of Emidio Pepe Montepulciano and a plate of fried artichokes.

Al Moro is one of my favourite restaurants in Italy and it happens to be next to the Fontana di Trevi. After a perfect dinner, Mrs Smith and I stumbled out into the rain and posed for a few midnight selfies in front of the fountain. Having ticked this off the list, we made our way to our hotel, Palazzo Roma, which we had booked for two nights and were very much looking forward to.

Palazzo Roma is located in the centre of Rome, on main drag Via del Corso, and was built in the 16th century. It has about 40 bedrooms and despite being in the middle of a very busy street, feels immediately calming on arrival. We were warmly greeted by the very charming team at the front desk, who immediately checked us in, took our bags and showed us to our bedroom. The room was very generous and I was pleased to find a mixture of classical Italian furniture, some warm and playful colours, and a few discreet nods to the Renaissance. The quality of the finishes was exquisite and great attention had clearly been paid to each small detail.

At this point, I must take a moment to write a short paragraph about the bathroom, which was possibly the most pleasing I have ever encountered. It was made almost entirely of marble and had an extraordinarily large shower, big enough to have its own marble bench — handy if you are the type of person who gets tired mid-shower and likes to sit down. It can be hard work, washing one’s body. It then occurred to me that the body wash smelled almost identical to a freshly poured Negroni. Was this a sign? It wasn’t described as such on the bottle and I continue to wonder if it was just a coincidence or… could they have been provided with intelligence confirming the Negroni to be my favourite of all drinks?

After all this excitement, it was definitely time for bed. We were too tired to drink the bottle of prosecco that had very kindly been placed in our room ahead of our arrival. We just about remembered to write our breakfast order on the menu card and hang it on the outside of the door, so we had something to look forward to in the morning.

At precisely 8am the following day, there was a knock on the door and room service appeared with what I can only describe as a chariot of delights. Fresh fruit, a selection of cakes and pastries, an omelette, some green juice and a large pot of steaming coffee. This was very enjoyable and somewhat of a novelty for Mrs Smith and I. Afterwards, we got dressed and headed out to explore the city.

With the hotel being so central, it was easy to reach the Roman Forum on foot, which we did before making our way to the Colosseum and then the Vatican. For lunch, we had a takeaway pizza and some suppli (fried rice balls, similar to the Sicilian arancini) from Bonci, which I highly recommend. It is busy and you must be prepared to queue, even in February. After that, we made our way by electric bicycle back to the hotel for a nap. 

That evening, we enjoyed a glass of prosecco from the minibar before walking over to another hotel called palazzo something — I forget the rest but as you can see, we are now only frequenting establishments that have the word ‘palazzo' in the name. We had two very cold martinis in a bar that was covered in frosted mirrors, with beautiful frescoes on the ceiling. For dinner, we crossed town and went to another restaurant I love called Trecca. We ate bone marrow, oxtail, pasta all'amatriciana and various other animal intestines, and washed it down with a bottle of Le Coste wine from the Lazio region. We slept well that night.

The following day, we had breakfast in the main restaurant, which was beautiful — I think I enjoyed it more than our breakfast in the room. The servers were very attentive and I needed three glasses of blood-orange juice to wake me up. There was a great little hazelnut cake that I could not resist but other than that, we just had fresh fruit. After breakfast, we said our goodbyes and checked out. We very much wished that we could stay another night, but Florence was calling. I couldn’t have wished for better accommodation during our trip to Rome — Mrs Smith and I look forward to returning in the summer.