Experimental Roma: a former bank off Via Veneto learns to stay up late
The Parisian group behind the Experimental Cocktail Club opens its first Roman hotel on 10 October, with Giovanni Passerini in the kitchen, Cy Twombly on the walls and a pool hanging over the rooftops of the Ludovisi quarter.
For a long time Rome's grand hotels seemed to run on inherited glamour, coasting on the memory of Ava Gardner at the Hassler and Fellini's photographers loitering on Via Veneto. That changed when Bulgari, Six Senses and Edition all arrived within a year of one another, and the city has been catching up ever since. Experimental Roma is the most interesting newcomer to land this autumn because it comes from a group that understands evenings better than almost anyone in European hospitality.
Experimental began in 2007 as a cocktail bar on a back street near Rue Montorgueil in Paris, and has grown into a small collection of hotels with the same sense of mischief, including Il Palazzo Experimental in Venice. Rome is its twelfth property and its first in the city, and it has chosen a building with a sober past: a former bank at Via Ludovisi 46, a few minutes' walk from the top of the Spanish Steps and the curve of Via Veneto.
Two moods under one roof
The French architect Rodolphe Parente has kept the terracotta façade and rebuilt almost everything behind it. His 82 rooms and suites come in two distinct temperaments, and they could hardly be more different. The first is theatrical, with light falling through interior shutters, blocks of saturated colour and headboards modelled on antique drapery, a deliberate nod to the salons of the Villa Medici with a dose of 1970s hedonism thrown in. The second is cooler and almost museum-like, with mineral patinas on the walls, two-tone lacquered ceilings and headboards of fluted steel, hung with work by Christo and by Cy Twombly, who made Rome his home in the late 1950s and never really left. Marble meets folded stainless steel throughout, which is Parente's way of acknowledging the bank without letting it dominate.
I would book the theatrical rooms for a weekend and the quieter ones for a working week, and I would ask for a high floor either way.
Passerini at the stove
The restaurant sits beneath a central skylight in what must once have been the banking hall, and it is in the hands of Giovanni Passerini, a Roman who made his name in Paris with his restaurant on Rue Traversière, where his tripe, offal and whole roast birds for sharing drew a devoted crowd of chefs on their nights off. Bringing him home to cook in his own city is a smart move, and it gives Experimental something most hotel restaurants in this part of Rome lack: a reason for Romans to book.
Downstairs, the group's signature Experimental Cocktail Club takes the late shift, and if it follows the pattern of its siblings in Paris and Venice it will fill up with Romans who have no intention of staying the night. On the roof there is a suspended swimming pool looking out across the domes and terraces of the centro storico.
Who should book
The Ludovisi quarter can feel rather buttoned up after dark, all embassies, insurance offices and grand hotels whose bars empty by eleven. Experimental Roma should change that, on its own corner at least, and travellers who like their hotels to have a bit of noise and life about them will feel at home. Those after hushed corridors and a turndown in the old style may prefer the Hassler or the Eden nearby. For anyone who wants to walk to the Villa Borghese in the morning, eat Passerini's cooking at night and finish with a properly made drink downstairs, it is the most promising opening in the city this year.
The details
Experimental Roma, Via Ludovisi 46, Rome. Opens 10 October 2026. 82 rooms and suites, restaurant by Giovanni Passerini, Experimental Cocktail Club, rooftop pool. Rates on request; experimentalgroup.com