Rome, Italy

Umiltà 36

Price per night from$737.65

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR681.82), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Dark, dashing and deco

Setting

Neighbourhood hangout

In a quiet street a block from the Trevi Fountain, Umiltà 36 only partly lives up to its name, ‘humility’. Sure, there’s a coyness about its seductively dark interiors: the black marble and gilt-edged glamour of all-day hangout Caffé Dandy; how its House of Hackney wallpaper and art deco details channel Thirties cool. But mostly we’re inclined to shout brazenly from the rooftops about its spacious, apartment-style suites, its ravishing Argentine bistro El Porteño, or, most appropriately, its actual rooftop, Terrazza Flores, where you’ll find aperitivos and 360-degree views of Rome. 

Smith Extra

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A cocktail each and Cucina food platter

Facilities

Photos Umiltà 36 facilities

Need to know

Rooms

47, including 20 suites.

Check–Out

12 noon, but late check-out can be arranged (when available) for an extra cost. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £642.66 (€750), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €10.00 per person per night on check-out.

More details

Rates don’t include the city tax which is €7 an adult. However, they do include a continental breakfast served at Caffé Dandy. Dishes from the à la carte breakfast menu can be ordered for an extra cost.

Also

Following the city’s ancient layout, Via dell’Umiltà is very slightly curved, which you’ll notice in the hotel’s moody corridors. And its stairwells have been stripped back to reveal their dramatic stonework.

At the hotel

Rooftop terrace, all-day café, bar, Argentine restaurant, mini-gym with two treadmills and an exercise bike. In rooms: Large walk-in closet, marble bathroom with a walk-in rainfall shower, shaving mirror, Naso Luca Maffei bath products, air conditioning, TV, free WiFi, desk, minibar, free bottled water, black-out curtain.

Our favourite rooms

The sultry mood of Caffè Dandy reaches deeper inside the hotel, along the curvaceous corridors and into the generously sized (for central Rome) rooms and suites, each with a marble bathroom, parquet floors and a large walk-in closet. Suites have an apartment feel, especially those with a hidden kitchenette. It’d be churlish to choose a favourite, but you’d be wise to opt for a superior suite on the second floor – they have the highest ceilings.

Spa

These days even the dandiest quaintrelles keep trim, so although there’s no spa here you will find a gym equipped with two treadmills and a bike. Fitness classes can be arranged and there’s a personal trainer available on request.

Packing tips

Vanni sunglasses to blend in with the locals; even a pair of Baruffaldi goggles, if you plan to go full native and hire a Vespa.

Also

Two rooms are wheelchair accessible and the public areas allow for easy movement for those with disabilities. However, please note there are a couple of small steps at the hotel entrance, and the surrounding streets have Rome’s famously uneven cobbles.

Pet‐friendly

Pooches weighing up to 10kg are welcome for €50 a night. See more pet-friendly hotels in Rome.

Children

This is a grown-up, city-centre stay, but families are welcome – just remember there isn’t much provision for little ‘uns. That said, babysitting can be arranged for €30 an hour.

Food and Drink

Photos Umiltà 36 food and drink

Top Table

A corner of the rooftop terrace for sundowners as the surrounding city comes alive.

Dress Code

Wide-sleeved day dresses and thick-heeled shoes to chime with the hotel’s Thirties vibe.

Hotel restaurant

Argentine brothers Alejandro and Sebastian Bernardez have recreated an authentic corner of their beloved Buenos Aires at El Porteño bistro, dishing up belly-filling fare such as gorgonzola- and bacon-stuffed baked potatoes; beef, chicken or spinach-and-bechamel empanadas; three-way Argentine black angus fillet with Malbec, thyme and truffle sauce; and utterly moreish mollejas salteadas. Under the up-on-high conservatory roof, Caffè Dandy is a neighbourhood hangout where discerning locals meet for cocktails and Italian light bites (if you can imagine such a thing). Up on the roof, Terazza Flores serves aperitivo and tapas, snacks and salads against a backdrop of the Quirinale, the Vittoriano and 360-degree views of historic Rome.

Hotel bar

Under the high atrium of the conservatory roof, Caffé Dandy welcomes guests and well-heeled locals for coffee and light lunches by day; at night-time, its black marble floors, exotic green-and-gold wallpaper and and gilt-trimmed interiors radiate with the atmosphere of a louche 1930s speakeasy. The barmen are on it, too, dressed in dandyfied uniforms and au fait with cocktails from every era.

Last orders

Caffé Dandy opens at 11am and will stay open until late, especially when there’s been live music. The kitchen at El Porteño is open from noon until 2am, and Terrazza Flores opens at 3pm and shuts down at around 1am.

Room service

Late-night revellers will appreciate that room service is available throughout the night, albeit with a truncated version of the menu.

Location

Photos Umiltà 36 location
Address
Umiltà 36
Via dell'Umiltà, 36
Rome
00186
Italy

Umiltà 36 is a block from the Trevi Fountain (with far less footfall), on its namesake street, Via dell’Umiltà. You’d be hard-pressed to be more in amongst it than here.

Planes

Rome Fiumicino airport is a 40-minute drive from the hotel, with connections to a multitude of European and further-afield destinations. A taxi from the airport should cost around €40. Low-cost airlines land at Ciampino airport, a 30-minute drive from the hotel.

Trains

Rome Termini, the city’s busiest train station, is a 10-minute drive from Umiltà 36. You can take a cab or opt to stroll it in 20 minutes, past museums, art galleries, the Quirinale Palace and – just around the corner – the Trevi Fountain. Trains arrive direct here from Naples, Pisa, Bologna and Florence, making it easy to combine your stay with visits to other Italian cities.

Automobiles

What have the Romans ever given us? Plenty, natch, but parking convenience is not one of them. Thankfully, Umiltà 36 is so centrally located, many of the top sights are within walking distance. Or, if you are getting a road trip underway from here, ​​then the Colonna car park is a few minutes’ walk away on Via Santa Maria in Via.

Worth getting out of bed for

Here in the Centro Storico, you can’t turn around for opulent Baroque squares, needlessly long colonnades, outrageous cathedrals and eye-goggling Roman ruins. The concierge at Umiltà 36 will gleefully organise an itinerary for you, but part of the fun of Rome is wandering aimlessly and seeing what appears. As it’s a block north, it’d be rude not to pay a visit to the Trevi Fountain if only to imagine Anita Ekberg trying to wade through today’s tourist crowds, rather than the quiet waters as envisioned in La Dolce Vita. Two blocks to the west is the Pantheon, whose architectural significance – it’s basically the OG of massive domes – is worth entering (the queue moves quickly and it’s free). Keep an eye out for Hadrian’s Temple in Piazza di Pietra, and marvel at endless Adonises and Medusas at the Roman National Museum. There are Caravaggios galore across the city, some of which are free to ogle like at the Basilica of S. Maria del Popolo, the Basilica di S. Agostino and the Church of S. Luigi dei Francesi; others are tucked away in impressive-in-their-own-right galleries: Borghese, Barberini, and Trastevere’s Corsini. It goes without saying that the Colosseum and the Forum will be teeming with people in the middle of the day, so early starts are required for tours there, and the same goes for St Paul’s Basilica at the Vatican, although you can book onto quieter Friday evening walkarounds to avoid the masses. Across the Tiber, atmospheric neighbourhood Trastevere is similarly best experienced midweek and early morning. South of the ruins of the Circus Maxentius is the entrance to the Appian Way, a 2,300-year-old, 560-kilometre road that has plenty of ancient Roman charm – if a very long, very straight road can be said to contain such a thing. A little off the beaten path, too, is the Domus Aurea, or Golden House: Emperor Nero’s buried pleasure palace whose frescoes, rediscovered in the 15th century, are said to have inspired Michelangelo and Raphael to abseil, wide-eyed, directly into it. You too can descend to its halls and chambers with a weekend tour (book in advance).

Local restaurants

Presented as refinement the world over, Italian cuisine so often owes its origins to peasant cooking. That’s certainly the case in the Jewish Quarter, where Italia Tagliacozzo’s street-side La Reginella specialises in carciofi alla giudia, Jewish-style fried artichokes, which had actor Stanley Tucci coo-ing in a recent TV travelogue. A blueprint for the ultimate Italian deli, century-old Ercoli in Trastevere does a mean coffee-and-cornetto combo come morning and will lure you back in the afternoon for cured meats and cheese – and their house spaghetti pomodori. There are also outlets in Prati and Parioli. Over in up-and-coming Ostiense, Marigold is a restaurant and micro bakery with a Scandi-meets-Williamsburg vibe, serving brunches of buttermilk pancakes, toasted banana bread and Sicilian avocado on rye toast alongside its specialty coffee blend. Its lunches – babaganoush with tatsoi and mizuna greens; asparagus salad with radish, parmesan and caesar dressing – are worth sticking around for, too. Just off the tiny Piazza Rondanini two blocks north of the Pantheon is Pizzeria Le Volte, where the service is akin to a family gathering – though our own mama could never have dreamt up pesto focaccia with truffles. Over by the Spanish Steps, the chefs at Dillà are making a name for themselves with dishes such as veal meatballs, mortadella and pistachio sauce; tagliolini with taleggio cheese and black truffle; and artisanal desserts such as top-notch tiramisu and a bellissimo mille-feuille with Italian chantilly and berries.

Local cafés

It’s never too late for an espresso – known simply as a caffè – in Rome, and you’re predictably spoiled for choice when it comes to great cafés. For starters, Tazzo d’Oro just off the Piazza della Rotonda is a king among kings. An espresso shot at its well-aged Egyptian-style counter is just €1 (don’t expect a seat – there aren’t any). The nearby Sant Eustachio Il Caffè is another contender, with its late-Thirties interior and water supply pumped from an ancient aqueduct. If you’re near the Vatican, then Pergamino Caffè is your safest bet for a no-nonsense pick-me-up or, if you haven’t had your fill of marble sculptures in the museums, Canova, named after the neoclassical sculptor and housed inside his former studio, sits at the edge of Piazza del Popolo and has a piano bar, an ivy-covered courtyard and a permanent, life-size, carved clientele. The display case of sweet things will tempt you at friendly Bar Santeo: the coffee is up there but if you’re already caffeinated (and why wouldn’t you be), try the velvety hot chocolate instead, with a fresh cornetto or plate of some other towering chocolate confection.

Local bars

The late-night action has gravitated east in recent years to working-class Pigneto, where craft beer spots and speakeasies are in no short supply. Necci dal 1924 will outlive them all, though: a former school and then gelato shop, it was once a fave of film director Pier Paolo Pasolini – and remains stylishly artsy to this day. North across the Tiber from Trastevere is Il Goccetto, popular for pre-dinner aperitivos on account of its 800 Italian labels, poured under painted wooden ceilings and mediaeval chandeliers. And in touristy Piazza Navona, Bar del Fico attracts both suit-wearing, negroni-swigging locals and an aperol-sipping cool crowd to its French-style bistro.

Reviews

Photos Umiltà 36 reviews

Anonymous review

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this tip-toes-from-Trevi hotel in the heart of Rome, unpacked their Tazza d’Oro coffee beans and set to work nursing their negroni hangovers, a full account of their Roman holiday will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Umiltà 36 in Italy…

These days, you’re unlikely to stumble upon the Trevi Fountain like Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita and expect to wade romantically into its waters unhindered. The marble landmark is almost always accompanied by several rows of visitors, all of them threading to or from it along Via delle Muratte. Thankfully, the parallel thoroughfare, Via dell’Umiltà, is a quieter affair (as perhaps hinted at by its name, ‘humility’), and it couldn’t be better positioned for Roman escapades, with the Pantheon, Colosseum, Forum and other tick-box delights a coin toss away.

And if the Trevi neighbourhood evokes strong Fellini vibes, then Umiltà 36 is similarly seductive, drawing not from classic 1960s cinema but from the equally glamorous inter-war period of arts deco and nouveau. Retaining original staircases and a grand conservatory roof, the interiors are darkly sophisticated thanks to black marble floors, Egyptianate panelling, natty staff uniforms and wallpaper exotica. Here be the place discerning locals smoulder over negronis, either in the aptly named Caffé Dandy or on the dashing rooftop terrace, before embarking on nights out that would tempt even hardened party poopers to strip off and dive into the nearest water feature.

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Price per night from $737.65