The Empire is no more but Italy's capital is still steeped in classical grandeur — and if you want to feel like an emperor yourself, this town has the 5 star hotels for the task. Here the grand palaces are joined by some smaller, more intimate residential-style hotels, and we've done the research to separate the great from the merely good. Our picks for the top Rome luxury hotels:
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Via Veneto & Piazza Barberini
Forget the bustling Rome of zipping motorbikes and carabinieri sirens — this corner of the city is steeped in an aristocratic tranquility. And there's no trace of design-hotel modernity; this place looks every bit its age, which is about a century. All of the twelve rooms and suites of this 5 star luxury hotel are capacious and elegant, with antique furniture and up-to-date amenities, and they look out over either the Palace's gardens or the Gardens of the Spalletti Trivellis. More...
12 Rooms
42 Verified Reviews
189 
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Spanish Steps - Trevi Fountain
Located in the top floors of a 19th-century townhouse is the luxury hotel Portrait Roma, the newest in a string of chic city boutique hotels by Lungarno, the Ferragamo family's hospitality concern. Simpler pleasures abound — many rooms come with petite balconies overlooking the action on the streets below, and the hotel's finest detail has to be the rooftop lounge, serving cocktails by the fireplace with a view of the Spanish Steps. More...
14 Rooms
30 Verified Reviews
211
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Piazza Navona & the Pantheon
As the old saying goes, you take the rough with the smooth. It means something rather different when the rough in question is G-Rough, the Roman sequel to Venice's high-design PalazzinaG. Here, aside from some raw textures and finishes, the rough side very rarely comes up — and the concept, outfitting a 17th-century building with Italian design classics from the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, is the very definition of smooth itself. More...
10 Rooms
21 Verified Reviews
87
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Centro Storico
With just thirty rooms and suites it's definitely boutique-scaled, though within the rooms you'll find comforts to rival the better luxury hotels — this means top-end materials and furnishings to back up the visual punch, and bathrooms that are worth writing home about. The location, near the Spanish Steps, makes JK Place's ultra-discreet service and posh boutique seclusion even more important. More...
30 Rooms
20 Verified Reviews
82
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Centro Storico
This luxury hotel is housed in a palace owned by a princess, and it's named after one of its most famous guests, Napoleon III, who lived here in 1830. That the hotel is located right off Via Condotti, an easy walk from Rome's best high-end shopping and many of its major sights, is almost beside the point; Residenza Napoleone III is a destination unto itself, and staying there a singular experience. Actually, there are two experiences on offer — that of living like an emperor, in the Napoleon suite, and that of staying in the quirky guest apartment of a latter-day royal family, in the Garden suite. More...
2 Rooms
6 Verified Reviews
82
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Palo Laziale
Once a carriage house for mail stages traveling up the coast north of Rome, it was bought and restored by the American industrialist J. Paul Getty, packed with antiquities and artworks as well as all the modern conveniences an eccentric billionaire could desire. The charm is not in ostentatious service, or state-of-the-art facilities, but in the elegance of the luxury hotel's estate, whose rooms and suites are furnished with 17th-century antiques and look out over the Mediterranean Sea or the estate's parks, full of artifacts of the Roman Empire. More...
19 Rooms
6 Verified Reviews
100
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Piazza del Popolo
Rome's Palazzo Dama is, in part, a tribute to the 18th-century marquise Anna Maria Malaspina, who, if the Palazzo's elegantly composed interiors and perfectly discreet luxuries are any indication, was an enviable lady indeed. The luxury hotel villa itself is a stunner, its well-preserved exterior giving way to interiors that blend the historic with the contemporary in that inimitably untroubled Italian style. More...
30 Rooms
20 Verified Reviews
99
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Piazza del Popolo
Once upon a time, on a sunny day at the Hotel de Russie, you might have spotted Pablo Picasso or Jean Cocteau peeling and eating the oranges that they picked in the hotel garden. This luxury hotel probably got its name, by the way, from Russian luminaries who hid out here — everyone from Igor Stravinsky to the Ballet de Russie and the Romanoffs. Service is discreet. Even the furniture is quiet — modern, but unpretentious. Order your wine from room service and sip it slowly from a gigantic glass the size of a fish bowl, or book a treatment at the spa — the only luxury spa in all of Italy. More...
122 Rooms
45 Verified Reviews
328
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Ancient Rome
This luxury hotel occupies a 16th-century villa which stands on the site of what used to be a training academy for gladiators — and, as befits the site's original purpose, also boasts an unmatched front-row view of the Colosseum. We've seen monastery hotels, castle hotels and all the rest, but the day gladiators' academies become a hot hotel trend, we'll officially hang up our laptops. The fourteen rooms and two suites are full of subtly whimsical design details, as well as thoughtful comforts like Bulgari bath products and B&O home theatre systems. More...
16 Rooms
23 Verified Reviews
129
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Parioli
Once a private villa in the Liberty style, an Italian variant of Art Nouveau, the Lord Byron has been renovated into a luxury hotel with a lush Art Deco look, a blend of modern and antique that feels effortlessly stylish, especially compared to the aging palace hotels and the ultra-modern design experiments elsewhere in town. Most rooms come with balconies or terraces, as well as marble baths, fabric-covered walls and massive, enveloping beds. The location may be the Lord Byron's greatest advantage with its spectacular city and garden views. More...
32 Rooms
59 Verified Review
280
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