When in Rome: The 10 Best Hotels in the Eternal City

In 1944 the Allies took over Hassler Roma for the Supreme Command of the Air Forces, and guests did not get it back until 1947. The Wirth family had only begun a near-total rebuild in 1939. Six generations of Wirths have now run the hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps, where it has stood since 1893, and it still belongs to a family rather than a group.

Ask for the San Pietro Presidential Suite, whose covered sixth-floor terrace frames the dome of St Peter's. The Trinità dei Monti suite sits so close to the church next door that you could almost reach out and touch it. The rest of the house brings the count to 82 rooms and suites.

Imàgo, the Michelin-starred restaurant, puts chef Andrea Antonini's cooking beside a wine list of more than 1,500 labels. Finish on the 7th Floor Terrace, with the domes and spires of the old city laid out below and none of the 135 steps to climb.

A small waterfall runs between three nymphaeums in the Secret Garden at Hotel de Russie, among roses, orange trees and pines. Giuseppe Valadier sketched those terraces up the Pincian Hill in the 1820s, a few years after he designed the hotel in 1814. In 1917 Jean Cocteau called the place paradise on earth. Picasso stayed for several months that year, and the Picasso Suite carries his name.

Olga Polizzi designed the rooms in a €30 million renovation, starting at 33 sq m. The Popolo Suite's wraparound terrace looks straight down on Piazza del Popolo. The Nijinsky Suite goes bigger, with 239 sq m of terrace over Villa Borghese and the garden.

Take aperitivo at the Stravinskij Bar, in an open-air piazzetta under a pergola inspired by Giacometti. Fulvio Pierangelini cooks dinner at Le Jardin, and the Irene Forte Spa keeps a saltwater hydro pool for the morning after.

Eight ribbed marble columns rise straight out of the water at Bvlgari Hotel Roma. The indoor pool runs 20 metres between them, lined in Bisazza mosaics, at the centre of a 1,500 square metre spa.

The rest of the hotel is dressed with the same jeweller's eye: Murano glass, marble mosaic roundels and 1930s Ginori vases by Gio Ponti. They fill a rationalist block that Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo built on Piazza Augusto Imperatore between 1936 and 1938. A Latin line on the south facade says the spirit of the Emperor Augustus flies through the air here, and the windows look onto his Mausoleum. The Bvlgari Suite, at more than 300 sq m, gets ten of them.

Il Ristorante comes from Niko Romito, whose own restaurant, Reale, earned three Michelin stars. Take your last glass up to La Terrazza, where the roof looks from Villa Medici across to the Janiculum.

Ingrid Bergman once lived in the Aurora Terrace Suite at Hotel Eden, where the 120 sq m terrace is bigger than the 86 sq m of rooms behind it. Up on the roof, a favourite of Federico Fellini's, La Terrazza holds a Michelin star under executive chef Salvatore Bianco. Il Giardino Bar shares the view from St Peter's to the Borghese gardens, in front of a wall of handmade metal leaves.

When the Eden opened in 1889 it was the first hotel in Rome with a lift, electricity, heating and running water. Dorchester Collection took it on in 2013 and reopened it in 2017 after a full restoration, with 68 rooms and 30 suites on the Pincian Hill above the Spanish Steps. Breakfast is charged separately, so budget €45 for the full Eden breakfast.

Hot, warm, then cold. The spa at Six Senses Rome runs a Roman bathing circuit from caldarium to tepidarium to frigidarium, with a hammam and five treatment rooms alongside. Patricia Urquiola carried the idea into the rooms, lining them in travertine and cocciopesto, the lime plaster of ancient Rome, and the hotel took three awards at the 2023 Hospitality Design awards, Best in Show among them.

The building is Palazzo Salviati Cesi Mellini, a 15th-century palazzo that Antonio Tommaso De Marchis reworked in the 18th century, on Piazza di San Marcello along Via del Corso. Rooms start at 34 sq m, but book the Terrace Junior Suite for 100 sq m and a leafy terrace of your own. From April to November, dinner moves up to NOTOS on the roof, among planters of herbs.

Every room at The First Roma Arte hangs work by modern Italian artists, and the hotel keeps its own art consultant. Studio Marincola styled all 26 rooms and suites, inside a 19th-century nobleman's palace on Via del Vantaggio, two minutes on foot from Piazza del Popolo.

The ground floor holds two Michelin stars. That is Acquolina, where chef Daniele Lippi serves his tasting menus from Tuesday to Saturday. Six floors up, Acquaroof Terrazza Molinari pours cocktails and serves fish over the rooftops. Book a Spa Suite and the hot tub comes on your own terrace.

Come early for the Cielo Bar on the roof of Hotel de la Ville, because it takes no reservations. From up there you look across St Peter's dome, the Pincio and the gardens of Villa Medici. Fulvio Pierangelini cooks at Cielo next door. He is also the chef at Hotel de Russie, run by the same Rocco Forte family.

The hotel fills an 18th-century palazzo on Via Sistina, at the top of the Spanish Steps. Rooms start at 28 sq m, and the Canova Suite, named for the Neoclassical sculptor, comes with its own terrace. For the Irene Forte Spa, go down instead of up. It is underground, with a hydro pool, a salt room and a full-body cryo chamber.

Olive and lemon trees frame the outdoor pool at Palazzo Dama, kept for hotel guests in the garden of a Liberty villa on the Lungotevere. The Malaspina family once received diplomats, aristocrats and the cultural elite here. The name pays tribute to the noblewomen of the house, among them the 18th-century Marchesa Anna Maria Malaspina, admired for her refinement and wit.

Today the villa holds 29 rooms and suites in blues and greens. The 200 square metre Daham spa has a water path with whirlpool, a Finnish sauna and a Turkish bath. Donkey's Bar serves Roman cooking inspired by Li Somari, a Bib Gourmand trattoria, and Villa Borghese is 450 metres away on foot.

French nuns once taught poor girls in the rooms of Hotel Vilòn. Princess Adelaide Borghese opened the school in 1841, in a mid-16th-century annex house of Palazzo Borghese, and the Figlie della Croce ran it. Now it holds 17 rooms and suites in Art Deco pastels and patterned wallpaper, some looking onto the private garden of Palazzo Borghese.

Book the Vilòn Suite for 87 sq m and a private marble steam bath. The restaurant, Adelaide, is named for the princess, and chef Gabriele Muro cooks Mediterranean and Roman dishes on a patio planted with greenery. The Spanish Steps are seven minutes away on foot, the Pantheon nine.

You swim under a ceiling of Swarovski crystals at Parco dei Principi Grand Hotel & Spa, or outside in a four-lane pool. The Prince Spa covers 2,000 square metres, and the hotel bills its indoor pickleball court as Europe's first in an urban resort.

Gio Ponti created the hotel, and it opened in 1964 on the north-eastern edge of Villa Borghese. Some rooms have terraces over the Borghese gardens and the dome of St Peter's, and Giò Giò, the rooftop restaurant, takes its green from the palette Ponti first envisioned for the place. The address is Parioli, a few steps from Via Veneto. You are outside the old centre here, and Roma Termini is 2 km away.