Stairway to heaven

The Spanish Steps are one of Rome’s busiest sightseeing spots. Tour groups pose, Instagrammers twirl, backpackers eat sandwiches on the rises until they’re moved on. At times you can’t see steps for tourists.

Why wouldn’t Spanish Steps be popular? They connect one piazza to another in an elegant sweep, baroque fountain at their foot, apricot-coloured buildings to each side. In 2015 they were fully renovated with money coughed up by Bulgari. You can’t get more Italian, even if the steps get their name from the nearby Spanish embassy.

For the best view, look up. The steps are crowned with an obelisk and twin-steepled Trinità dei Monti church. Just to the right rises another stately building, the legendary Hotel Hassler Roma, a member of Leading Hotels of the World.

Push past the people jostling for photos. Greet the suave doorman in his natty uniform – nobody does uniforms better than the Italians. 

Step inside. The lobby is cool, shady and intimate after the hot busyness of tourist Rome.

The Hassler Roma is one of the city’s last independent, family-owned luxury hotels, founded in 1893 by a Swiss family, which explains its name. No better spot to retreat after a day in the beautiful but maddening Italian capital.

Here you are, right in the middle of things. Get out and enjoy. In Rome, great artists have designed piazzas and domes, palaces are home to popes and princes, and everywhere you turn there is a sense of déjà vu from old movies and fashion shoots.

A visit is much more than just a wander through a glorious past and world-class art, however. Modern Rome is dynamic and full of fashion boutiques, lively cafés and gelato bars. In the last decade, the city has overhauled decaying infrastructure, better organised its museums and spruced up its monuments.

The Hassler Roma is getting a refresh too. A new spa and wine cellar, for a start. This being Rome, wine tastings will also be conducted in part of an ancient Roman aqueduct accidentally uncovered by workmen in the hotel’s courtyard. Two thousand years of history is hidden here.

The old is celebrated at the Hassler Roma. Stately, almost old-fashioned service is matched with mahogany and polished brass. Tradition is cherished. Fashion designers, movie stars and royalty have all stayed – Princess Diana claimed the hotel bar served the world’s best Bellini.

But things always move on. In the 1950s, for example, Hassler Roma opened Rome’s first panoramic restaurant. More recently it innovated again, transforming the restaurant into Imago, which is elegantly pared down and has a Michelin star for its contemporary Roman cuisine. 

The views are as fabulous as ever though, right across Rome to the popping dome of St Peter’s Basilica. You can enjoy a game of monument-spotting as you dine.

You won’t want to stare at the views forever. Head out, down the Spanish Steps and into Rome’s most elegant shopping district centred on Via dei Condotti. You can walk to top city sights such as the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona – perhaps most wonderful at night under illuminations – and Galleria Borghese.

The latter is one of Italy’s best art museums, which is saying something. Don’t miss it if you’re a fan of Caravaggio. As a bonus, the creamy villa sits in Rome’s finest public park, the Borghese Gardens, which start just uphill from the Hassler Roma.

You need a centrally located hotel in Rome because it’s a city made for idle wandering rather than being stuck in traffic. The city is dotted with aqueducts, ruined temples, crumbling statues and triumphal arches.

Beyond the big sights, Rome still has some secrets: churches that no one visits, crumbling palazzi with Baroque architecture and beautiful statues, courtyards hidden behind wrought-iron gates.

Soak up the everyday life too. Streets are full of the tumultuous life in which Italians specialise. Slurp gelato in a Renaissance piazza, admire the gesticulations of the show-off traffic police and explore back alleys in which cats slink and saints wave from rooftops.

If you need advice on where to go or eat, the hotel’s concierges are adept at recommending local places and endearingly retro in the way they might draw you a map on paper. It’s the sort of impeccable service you expect from a Leading Hotel of the World.

You’ll want to make it to the Vatican, a big walk for the hearty, or a quick transfer in the hotel’s electric car. This year is a rare Jubilee year for Catholics that will see additional cultural and religious events in the Vatican and across Rome. Catholic or not, it’s a place steeped in history and one that inspires a certain awe.

There must be extraordinary views from the papal palace, since St Peter’s looms right beside it. But it doesn’t have a hill to add height, though, and in the late afternoon, as you return exhausted after a big day’s sightseeing, there’s no better perch than the terraces at Hassler Roma, from which to base down on the celebrated city and enjoy it at a much more civilised pace.

Sister property Il Palazetto, which has just four guestrooms, sits almost next door, right on the edge of the Spanish Steps, and has a terrific cocktail bar. Order a negroni or Campari spritz and watch the sun bounce across the city’s domes until it sinks into the unseen Mediterranean. In a city that boasts so many world class attractions, this is hard to beat. Pure, Roman perfection.