From the outside, the Bvlgari Hotel Roma is all clean lines and quiet authority, a relic of the city’s fascist-era architecture. But step inside and the mood shifts entirely.

Directly opposite the Mausoleum of Augustus – currently emerging from a long-awaited restoration – the hotel is a confident homecoming for the Roman jewellery house that inspired it.

Opened in 2023, this is only the ninth outpost in the Bvlgari hotel portfolio, a brand that has always favoured considered expansion over ubiquity. The result? A stay that feels rarefied, polished and Roman.

Inside, a second-century marble statue commands the foyer with gravitas. It’s part of a rotating exhibition on loan from the illustrious Torlonia family collection, just one example of how the hotel blends heritage with high design. Beyond it, glass cases gleam with Bvlgari jewels, while the polished marble surfaces shimmer in the light. It’s less hotel lobby, more curated gallery of Roman splendour and a harbinger of the opulence to come.

Why stay here?

Upstairs, the atmosphere softens into something more intimate. The hotel’s 114 rooms and suites are spread across six floors, each one designed as a sumptuous cocoon away from the city’s lively streets.

Our Junior Suite was a study in balance: muted neutrals offset by jewel-toned accents, including a rich green headboard and coordinating rug. The living area, anchored by a cream sofa and a sculptural Arco lamp by Flos, felt both elegant and inviting. A marble coffee table, sleek minibar and leather armchair completed the picture.

The ceilings soared, giving the room a sense of grandeur, while tall windows – soon to overlook the restored mausoleum – were draped in billowing cream curtains. Service included thoughtful touches: plates of fresh fruit, delicate mini-cakes and a turndown service that included herbal tea served in flasks. It’s this attention to detail that elevates the experience from luxurious to genuinely indulgent.

But the bathroom stole the show. Ours was clad in blue-green Brazilian marble, streaked with deep rust veins – it was dramatic, unusual and mesmerising. Other suites feature equally striking palettes, including a rich Sudanese red. At its centre sat a deep porcelain tub, crowned by a celestial Bvlgari mosaic. Add a walk-in shower, double sinks lined with Bvlgari toiletries and a dressing room complete with vanity, Dyson hair dryer and generous storage, and you have a space designed for lingering.

Down below, the subterranean spa feels like a hidden world unto itself. Far from the modest wellness areas typical of city hotels, this is a vast, shimmering sanctuary. A 20-metre heated pool stretches out, its surface glinting with blue, green and gold mosaics inspired by Bvlgari’s signature design, the Divas’ Dream fan motif. Marble columns rise dramatically from the water, while a bubbling vitality pool and waterfall shower add to the sense of theatricality. It’s the kind of place where hours slip by unnoticed, especially when stretched out on one of the cloud-soft loungers.

Eating and drinking

Il Caffè on the ground floor is a bright, inviting space where marble and mirrors meet lush greenery. Breakfast here is an unhurried affair, with options ranging from continental classics to Chinese, Arabic and health-focused selections. Even the simplest dishes feel elevated: porridge arrives with an array of seven toppings, while avocado toast is generously layered with thick slices of smoked salmon. Everything is served on beautifully crafted Ginori porcelain for a final flourish.

As evening approaches, La Terrazza becomes the place to be. With panoramic views across Rome’s rooftops, it’s ideal for a pre-dinner aperitivo. The Bvlgari signature cocktail – a bright blend of gin, Aperol, citrus, and a delicate foam stamped with edible gold – captures the hotel’s spirit in a single glass and is served in all its bars worldwide.

The Bvlgari Bar is a destination in its own right. Its striking black marble counter, supported by Murano glass cones infused with gold dust, glows softly as the room fills with guests. There’s a lively and sophisticated energy here that contrasts with the calm of the hotel’s library lounge and chocolate boutique on the ground floor.

For something more formal, Il Ristorante – Niko Romito offers a refined take on Italian cuisine by the acclaimed chef. Here, traditional dishes are reimagined with precision and flair: think lasagne layered with pecorino and artichokes, or spaghetti vongole lifted with parsley pesto. A perfectly cooked turbot, paired with Sardinian vermentino, made for a standout main, while a chocolate mousse infused with Alchermes liqueur provided a fittingly indulgent finale.

Things to do

Step outside and Rome unfolds at your feet. The Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and Piazza Navona are all within easy walking distance, while the boutiques of Via dei Condotti beckon just around the corner. Further afield, a short journey brings you to the grandeur of St Peter’s Basilica or the ancient drama of the Colosseum.

Yet Rome’s magic often lies in its quieter corners. A stroll through the leafy expanse of Villa Borghese offers a welcome escape from the crowds, while the Protestant Cemetery in Testaccio provides a moment of reflection. Here, among cypress trees and weathered stones, lie the graves of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as the haunting “Angel of Grief” sculpture by William Wetmore Story.

The verdict

In a city overflowing with grandeur, Bvlgari Hotel Roma manages to carve out its own distinct identity. It’s not just a place to stay but a luxurious celebration of Roman craftsmanship, heritage and style. Once you’ve checked in, you may find it difficult to leave.

Vicki was a guest at Bvlgari Hotel Roma; bulgarihotels.com

At the very top of the Spanish Steps, where the crowds thin and the city seems to exhale, Hotel de la Ville presides over Rome with quiet confidence.

This five-star address in the Centro Storico is spread across three 18th-century palazzi deftly brought together around a sun-splashed courtyard, creating a retreat that feels both intimate and unmistakably grand.

Since joining the Rocco Forte Hotels portfolio in 2019, the property has been reimagined by Olga Polizzi and architect Tommaso Ziffer as a love letter to the Grand Tour. Its rooms are layered with classical references, playful objets and a rich colour palette. The result is a hotel that doesn’t simply nod to Rome’s past but revels in it – while delivering the kind of polished service, destination dining and cocooning spa that makes stepping back outside entirely optional.

Why stay here?

Location is the obvious draw: you’re moments from the Spanish Steps. But the real seduction lies inside. Our Junior Suite Deluxe, on the fourth floor, opened on to a balcony overlooking the terracotta courtyard – striped parasols and potted greenery glowing even in the soft light of January. Interiors are gloriously free of safe neutrals. Instead, there’s a confident clash of colour and texture: a navy velvet headboard against duck-egg walls, olive drapes pooling beside antique desks topped with busts and art books. It feels curated rather than decorated, like a collector’s Roman apartment.

Bathrooms dial the drama back to pure white marble, with generous rainfall showers and Irene Forte’s Sicilian botanical products. The top-floor suites come with expansive terraces and knockout views across Rome’s domes and cupolas – the kind of panorama that turns a sunset into a private show.

Downstairs, the boutique spa is a welcome counterpoint to the city’s sensory overload. There’s a hydrotherapy pool for warming soaks, a thermal circuit with salt room, sauna and steam, and the bracing option of a cryotherapy chamber for the fearless. We opted for bubbles rather than sub-zero temperatures – a suitably indulgent Roman compromise.

Eating and drinking

In a city where eating well is practically guaranteed, Hotel de la Ville still manages to raise the bar. At Café Ginori – linked to the adjoining Ginori 1735 porcelain boutique – dinner arrives on the very plates you can later buy, a clever touch that blurs the line between meal and memento. Lasagnetta al ragù and fettuccine Alfredo are comfortingly classic, while dishes such as cod tempura add a contemporary flourish. Each course is matched with thoughtful Italian wines; a bright Orvieto with the fish was a particular highlight.

Breakfast and dinner are served at Mosaico, an elegant space that spills into the courtyard in warmer months. Indoors, black-and-white floors, columns and chandeliers set a theatrical tone for a dinner menu that travels beyond Italy, weaving in flavours from North Africa and the Middle East. Mornings bring an abundant spread of cheeses, charcuterie, fruit, pastries and eggs cooked to order – a filling start before a day of sight-seeing.

Later, the jewel-box Julep Bar beckons with its vivid yellow walls and velvet seating, perfect for an armagnac nightcap. In summer, cocktails migrate to the rooftop Cielo Bar, where Rome’s skyline becomes the ultimate backdrop.

Things to do

Step outside and the city’s greatest hits are within strolling distance: the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain and the elegant sweep of Piazza Navona. The green expanse of Villa Borghese is close enough for a morning wander, while the Colosseum and Forum are a short bus ride away.

If you’ve ticked off the icons before, Rome rewards deeper exploration. The Teatro di Marcello – a miniature precursor to the Colosseum – offers ancient grandeur without the queues. Art lovers can follow a self-guided Caravaggio trail through nearby churches, including San Luigi dei Francesi and Basilica di Sant'Agostino, dropping a coin into the light boxes to illuminate the paintings in situ – a quietly magical experience.

For retail therapy, the hotel is mere metres from Via dei Condotti, where designer flagships beckon customers craving haute couture, while Via del Corso offers a livelier, high-street passeggiata.

The verdict

Hotel de la Ville is more than a perfectly placed base; it’s a destination in its own right. Between the exuberant design, stylish rooms, accomplished dining and restorative spa, it offers a version of Rome that is as hedonistic as it is historic. Step outside and the Eternal City is at your feet; stay in, and you’re wrapped in a world of colour, craftsmanship and five-star ease. Either way, it’s la dolce vita distilled.

Vicki was a guest of Hotel de la Ville, a Rocco Forte Hotel; roccofortehotels.com

Nonstop flights help start — and end — trips on a high note. There are fewer stressors like worrying about tight connections or if your suitcase will make it on the next plane. Plus, you save time by not having to wait around the airport for the next leg of your journey. Ready for takeoff? Pack your bags, and book a seat on one of these new nonstop routes.

Alaska Airlines: Seattle (SEA) to Rome (FCO)

For its first foray into Europe, Alaska Airlines is heading to Rome, with daily, seasonal summer service beginning April 28. Travelers will board a long-haul 787 Boeing Dreamliner with three sections: Main Cabin, Premium Class and Business Class, which features 34 enclosed suites with lie-flat beds.

Rome was one of the most requested nonstop destinations from Seattle customers, Alaska said, and flight frequency was bumped up from four times a week to daily due to travel demand. It’s not surprising that this is already a popular route, as the Eternal City sees millions of visitors during the summer months.

American Airlines: Miami (MIA) to Bimini, Bahamas (BIM)

On Feb. 14, American Airlines expanded its already robust service to the Bahamas, launching direct flights to Bimini on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. This is American’s seventh destination in the Bahamas and the sole nonstop flight from the U.S. to Bimini, a “collection of cays and islands” that “offer a mix of adventure and rest,” said Travel and Leisure. Divers come to swim through the “cerulean” water and explore a “coral reef system teeming with wildlife and tropical currents,” while anglers are drawn to the island’s “famous” bonefish flats.

Delta Airlines: Atlanta (ATL) to Riyadh (RUH)

This nonstop flight from Delta’s hub in Atlanta to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, will be both a “historic” and “strategic move reshaping global aviation routes,” said Fortune. Delta is the first U.S. airline to offer direct service to Saudi Arabia, and it comes at a time when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is trying to “shift the country away from oil dependence and toward tourism, investment and technology.” When service begins on Oct. 23, flights will operate three times a week on Airbus A350-900 planes equipped with Delta Main, Delta Comfort, Delta Premium Select and Delta One.

JetBlue: Boston (BOS) to Barcelona (BCN)

JetBlue’s seasonal daily flight to Barcelona, set to launch on April 16, is the airline’s latest transatlantic offering. As with its treks to London, Paris, Edinburgh and Dublin, the company plans to fly Airbus A321LR narrow-body jets, which carry “fewer travelers” than twin-aisle planes but are “cheaper to operate since they require less fuel,” said CNBC.

Travelers should try their best to nap on the flight over; after touching down in Barcelona, you’ll want to immediately start exploring this “fabulous showcase of Catalan culture,” said Lonely Planet. Night arrivals are no exception; after dark, the city is “reimagined,” with plazas, parties and clubs “springing to life.”

Starlux: Phoenix (PHX) to Taipei (TPE)

Starlux’s nonstop flight from Phoenix to Taipei links the two destinations for the first time. Flights are taking off three times a week, with passengers boarding Airbus A350-900 planes featuring four “ultra-lavish” first-class seats and 26 lie-flats with direct aisle access, said Condé Nast Traveler. Upon arrival, travelers can hit the ground running, visiting the Longshan Temple and Elephant Mountain and stopping to enjoy “world-famous street food.”

United Airlines: Newark, New Jersey (EWR) to Seoul (ICN)

When United starts its daily nonstop service from Newark to Seoul on Sept. 4, the airline will be the only U.S. carrier offering direct flights to the South Korean capital from the New York City region. This route “capitalizes on Seoul’s rising popularity,” said Afar, with travelers flocking to the city year-round to experience its “four true and very scenic seasons.”

Seoul has an “extensive and efficient” subway system that makes it easy for visitors to “cover a lot of ground in a single trip,” said Afar. That includes the chance to sample the “storied food scene” and hunt for the “coolest new K-beauty brands.”

United Airlines: San Francisco (SFO) to Adelaide, Australia (ADL)

Koalas, kangaroos and delicious wines are now a 16-hour flight away. United’s new route from San Francisco to Adelaide is the first to directly connect the U.S. and South Australia, with the airline flying Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners three days a week.

Adelaide proper boasts a “walkable” center, with stops like the Adelaide Botanic Garden and Adelaide Central Market offering a “first taste” of the area, said Travel and Leisure. Outside of the city in the Adelaide Hills you’ll find 50 different wine cellars and Cleland Wildlife Park, where visitors can “interact with some of Australia’s most iconic animals,” like wallabies.

When it's too hot and busy for sightseeing, try cooling off in a shady garden. These secret spots are far enough off the beaten track to avoid most of the crowds – and so beautiful that it's easy to spend an afternoon strolling along their winding paths and admiring their perfectly manicured lawns. Here are some of our favourites.

Camley Street Natural Park, London

Bustling King's Cross feels like an "unlikely place to find a verdant nature reserve", but that's exactly what you'll discover just over the canal from Coal Drops Yard, said Condé Nast Traveller. Moments from the station lies Camley Street: "two acres of thriving grassland, woods and wetlands". A "meandering path" leads you through the reed beds and marshes, which are home to an "impressive amount of wildlife". Be sure to stop off for a cup of tea and slice of cake at the charming cafe.

Dr Neil's Garden, Edinburgh

"Hidden and alluring", this beautiful haven boasts "cinematic views of Arthur's Seat", said Culture Trip. Situated next to Duddingston Loch, the neglected land was transformed into the garden it is today by local doctors Andrew and Nancy Neil back in 1963 so their patients would have an outdoor space to enjoy. The "secluded" spot is known as "Edinburgh's secret garden", and its flower-filled lawns have long been a source of artistic and literary "inspiration" for visitors to the Scottish capital.

Vrtba Garden, Prague

This pretty garden on Petřín Hill is "hard to find", said The Guardian. Visitors who make the effort to "seek it out are rewarded with baroque beauty". The Italianate garden – created around 1720 on the site of the Vrtbovský Palace's former vineyards – comprises three terraced platforms brimming with thousands of flowers and shrubs, and dotted with statues. Climb to the pavilion in the highest garden for spectacular views over the city.

Giardino degli Aranci, Rome

"The crush of Rome can be overwhelming," said The Telegraph, so escape the throngs of tourists with a stroll beneath the pine trees at this hidden gem. Located atop the city's Aventine Hill, the Giardino degli Aranci (Orange Garden) is free to enter. The sprawling garden is "part lookout, part sanctuary, with a staggering panorama of Rome's domes, rooftops, St Peter's Basilica and the Tiber River threading it all together".

Parc de Bagatelle, Paris

Tucked away in the Bois de Boulogne, this peaceful spot is a "mischievous hotch-potch of waterfalls, a grotto – even a Chinese pagoda – surrounded by stunning blooms", said The Telegraph. The park is home to a sprawling garden of more than 10,000 roses; visit during Week-end de la Rose à Bagatelle in June and "you'll have crashed Paris's most fragrant secret".

Centralbadet Garden, Stockholm

This "hidden courtyard garden" lies right in the heart of Stockholm, moments from the main shopping street, said The Guardian. Architect Wilhelm Klemming bought the property back in 1901, restoring the park and building an "affordable day spa" that remains open today. Expect "winding paths", an idyllic pond filled with koi fish and lots of "shady places to sit".

Much of ancient Rome, of course, "remains hidden under visitors' feet," said Tony Perrottet in Smithsonian. Visit the Pantheon or the Colosseum and you'll notice that the buildings' foundations sit far below current street levels. Plenty of what surrounded them lies under 30 feet of accumulated debris and new construction. That's what makes the underground "Roman archaeology's final frontier," inspiring two groups of amateur spelunkers to begin leading subterranean tours, opening up "a fascinating, multidimensional honeycomb of pagan shrines, public baths, hidden lakes, grand sewers, and Christian catacombs." Recently, I succumbed to "an obsession with the city's last hidden corners," starting on the day I visited an ancient underground aqueduct just outside the city.

Most of the 11 "superbly crafted" aqueducts that fed fresh water to Rome ran below grade, and I'd met that morning with several members of Sotterranei di Roma, or Undergrounds of Rome, to explore one. Donning hard hats and headlamps, we found an ancient maintenance hole in an overgrown field and descended by ladder into pitch darkness. A bat swooped past my head, and the walls were crawling with spiderlike crickets. "To some, this might be the stuff of nightmares." But I instantly wanted to see more. Surprisingly, "there are many other underground sites that are entirely accessible to travelers, if they know about them." I met up with a professor, Giuseppina Mattietti, who guides students via little-known museums or churches, such as the Crypta Balbi and the Basilica of San Clemente, to hidden worlds below the center city. Other sites "require some planning to visit," but Rome's Special Superintendence of Archaeology does grant requests.

The Sotterranei di Roma is headquartered in the Labyrinth of Rome, a 22-mile network of former quarry tunnels. One night, members guided me "deep into the dank maze" until we found a 20-foot ladder that rose to a hole in the stone ceiling cut by medieval tomb raiders to plunder Christian catacombs. We clambered up, and soon my headlamp illuminated shards of pottery, mosaics, and human remains, including a skull. I've visited impressive church catacombs, but "somehow, squatting in the darkness with my hands and knees covered in grime caught my imagination more." Tours of underground sites with Sotterranei di Roma (sotterraneidiroma.it) start at $17.

Rivalries are boiling over in Madrid, where the official "oldest restaurant in the world" is facing a challenge on its record-setting longevity from another of the city's historic eateries.

Sobrino de Botín, which opened in 1725, has enjoyed the Guinness World Record as the world's oldest restaurant since 1987 but, just as it celebrates its third centenary, another establishment – Casa Pedro – is claiming it opened its own doors in 1702.

However, meeting the esoteric rules laid down by the Guinness Book of Records to prove its claim is anything but straightforward. And, even if Casa Pedro is able to navigate the rules – a task stymied by the loss of documents in the Spanish Civil War – to usurp Sobrino de Botín's crown, a bistro in Rome may yet spoil the party for both of them.

'Damn it, let's prove it!'

Just like Sobrino de Botín, Casa Pedro is a family-owned affair, offering Castilian classics, like stewed tripe and roast suckling pig, in a rustic setting with "charming" Spanish tiles, exposed wooden beams and underground wine cellars, said The Independent.

Both venues have welcomed famous visitors. Botín has served a canon of literary giants over the years, including Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene. Ernest Hemingway described it as "one of the best restaurants in the world". Casa Pedro, for its part, has frequently played host to royals, including Spain's current monarch, King Felipe VI.

They've much in common but now their rival claims have put them at odds, as Casa Pedro bids to steal Botín's historic title. "If you look at the restaurant's logo, it says, 'Casa Pedro, since 1702,' so we said, 'Damn it, let's try to prove it," the restaurant's eighth-generation proprietor Irene Guiñales told The Associated Press. But doing so is not proving an easy task.

'Went up in flames'

Guinness is cagey about its exact criteria for the title: the verification process is shared only with applicants. But a spokesperson said it requires "substantial evidence" and "documentation". Antonio González, a third-generation proprietor of Botín, said that Guinness required the restaurant to show that it has continuously operated in the same location and with the same name.

But the vacillations of history don't always make it simple to produce the evidence: local-archive papers for the area around Casa Pedro "went up in flames" during the Spanish Civil War.

To "make matters dicier", said Euronews, an Italian trattoria in Rome, may yet "pip" both Sobrino de Botín and Casa Pedro to the oldest-restaurant post. Nestled in the city's historic centre, La Campana is said to have been in continuous operation for more than 500 years, and its owners say they have completed the necessary paperwork and are ready to submit their case to Guinness.

So the scene is set for a continental culinary battle – but whether diners actually care if their restaurant is officially designated the oldest in the world or not is another matter. David González and Mayte Villena, regulars at Casa Pedro, seemed nonplussed by all the fuss. "It wouldn't change a thing for us," they told The Independent.

Historians have long believed that ancient humans fought animals in arena battles, but no definitive evidence has been found — until now. An archeological breakthrough two decades in the making has provided the first proof that gladiators did indeed fight animals.

The discovery by a team of archaeologists may simply confirm what historians have already assumed. But some in the scientific community are hoping the unearthing may continue to unlock ancient secrets.

What discovery was made?

The discovery is the "first physical evidence for human-animal gladiatorial combat," according to the findings, which were published April 23 in the journal PLOS One. The findings came in the "form of a skeleton from a Roman settlement in Britain," said The New York Times. This damaged skeleton was found in the city of York, England, 20 years ago, but archeologists have only now proven what caused the injuries.

This skeleton had "small indentations in the hip bones," said the Times, and these "notches looked like bite marks from a large animal, perhaps a lion." But no proof of this was found when the skeleton was originally excavated. So researchers "created a map of the dimensions and depth of the animals' bites." They then "compared the bite marks left by the different animals with the indentations on the ancient skeleton," which confirmed that the marks came from a lion.

Why is this discovery important?

It is "rare for archaeologists to find physical evidence of such combat in the form of Roman gladiators' remains," especially for "something seemingly so well-documented," said Scientific American. Also, this new evidence "not only offers fascinating clues into the culture of gladiatorial combat but also highlights the astonishingly far-reaching influence of the Roman Empire."

These fights were "one of the key ways that Roman culture was spread," Anna Osterholtz, a bioarchaeologist at Mississippi State University, said to Scientific American. The games "taught things like social roles and social norms." The remains also describe "people's lives that weren't considered important enough to be written down, that were never part of the official record."

The findings, additionally, are proof the U.K. "was well integrated into the customs and systems of the Roman Empire at its peak and provide evidence that Roman entertainments were widespread across the empire," Jaclyn Neel, an associate professor of Greek and Roman studies at Canada's Carleton University, told CNN.

This revelation now opens the door for scientists to make more discoveries — mainly, how these animals may have been transported. Scientists "know that these events happened in the provinces of the Roman Empire, but it raises other questions," Tim Thompson, an anthropologist at Ireland's Maynooth University and the lead author of the study, said to The Guardian. How do you "get a lion from Africa to York?"

Either way, experts seem excited by the prospect of continued research. The realization "gives us a remarkable insight into the life — and death — of this particular individual and adds to both previous and ongoing genome research," David Jennings, the CEO of York Archaeology, said in a press release. Scientists "may never know what brought this man to the arena where we believe he may have been fighting for the entertainment of others," but it is "remarkable that the first osteoarchaeological evidence for this kind of gladiatorial combat has been found so far from the Colosseum of Rome."

'America needs to have a heart-to-heart about money'

Suze Orman at Newsweek

Many "people are living in financial denial — pretending they can't afford to save, while spending on things they don't need," says Suze Orman. If "you are not saving at least 10% of your income, after taxes, for your future, you are making a dangerous choice." If we "don't change course, we're going to see a generation of elders struggling to survive, not because they were lazy or careless — but because they didn't get the truth early enough."

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'The Roman Empire loved by Elon Musk and Steve Bannon never existed'

Honor Cargill-Martin at The New York Times

The "ascendant right wing loves ancient Rome," says Honor Cargill-Martin. Apart "from the problem of comparing modern America with a Mediterranean empire that flourished before the advent of Christianity, capitalism and mass media," archaeology has "undermined the idea that there was a consistent pattern of population decline in the late republic or the late empire." What the "right has captured is a tradition established by the Romans themselves, creating an uncanny hall of populist mirrors that reflects millenniums-old contortions."

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'African workers are taking on Meta and the world should pay attention'

Mercy Mutemi at Al Jazeera

Meta has "taken a defiant new tone on the question of whether and to what extent it accepts responsibility for the real-world harm that its platforms enable," says Mercy Mutemi. In African countries, the "post-independence constitution differs from those in the U.S. and Western Europe with its explicit prioritization of fundamental human rights and freedoms." We are "now beginning to see how these constitutions can be brought to bear in the global technology industry."

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'We get it, you're rich'

Alison Green at Slate

At a "time when many Americans are struggling with rising costs of living and worries about their households' financial stability, many corporate executives are making it clear that they have no idea what life is like for their employees," says Alison Green. This "betrays a fundamental divide between higher-level management and the people who work for them." It's "tough for employees to respect managers who look this out-of-touch and oblivious or to feel that they share a common agenda."

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The death of a pope, the spiritual leader of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics, propels the Holy Roman Church into "its most dramatic moment of flux", said The New York Times.

For that very reason, the period between a pontiff's death and the election of a successor is marked by a series of "carefully choreographed" rituals and moments of "pageantry", designed to communicate order and continuity.

What happens when a pope dies?

The protocol had been "refined over centuries and hundreds of dead popes", said Politico. Firstly, the death is confirmed by the camerlengo, a senior Vatican position currently held by Irish-born Cardinal Kevin Farrell. While doctors will have made a medical confirmation of death, the camerlengo's role is a ceremonial one, in which he calls out the pope's name and receives no response.

The pontiff's body, in a simple white cassock, is taken to his private chapel, where he is robed in red vestments and then placed in a zinc-lined wooden coffin with his symbols of office, the mitre and pallium, beside him, said The New York Times.

Then the camerlengo drafts a document authenticating the pope's death, and the pontiff's private papers are gathered, his apartments sealed off and his "fisherman's ring", used to seal papal documents, is defaced or destroyed with a ceremonial hammer.

What happens between the pope's death and the funeral?

The pope's death will automatically trigger a nine-day mourning period known as the Novendiale. Daily prayers and requiem masses will be held both in the Vatican and throughout the Catholic world.

Since the 13th century, the embalmed body of the deceased pope has been taken, in procession, to lie in state, on a raised pedestal, in St. Peter's Basilica. However, in 2024, Pope Francis "decided to highlight humility over glorification", and rewrote the protocol to do away with the raised platform, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a church historian, told The New York Times.

What is a papal funeral like?

The pope's funeral would be usually be held in St. Peter's Square between four and six days after his death, with "mourners packing into the Vatican for the service", said Politico.

His face covered by a white silk veil, the pope is buried with a bag containing coins minted during his reign, and a canister with a "rogito", or deed, summarising his life and papacy.

Until a successor is chosen, the Vatican will be in a transitional period called sede vacante ("vacant seat"), in which power is temporarily vested in the College of Cardinals – although any major decisions will be delayed until the next pope is installed.

A charred scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum has been digitally "unwrapped", allowing researchers to peer inside the ancient document after 2,000 years.

One word appears more than once in the text that's been deciphered so far, so experts have already been able to hazard a guess at the document's subject matter.

Crumbling papyri

The ancient scroll, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. It's "too fragile to ever be physically opened", said the BBC. That delicacy was demonstrated when previous papyri "crumbled to dust" when researchers tried to open them, said The Guardian.

The latest scroll has been taken to a gigantic high-intensity X-ray facility in Oxfordshire, where electrons were "accelerated to almost the speed of light" to produce an X-ray beam powerful enough to "probe the scroll without damaging it", said The Independent.

Artificial intelligence can detect the ink without opening the scroll, although this is "easier said than done", said the BBC, because the papyrus and ink are both made from carbon and are "almost indistinguishable from each other".

When the document was virtually unrolled on a computer, several columns of text were revealed. One word in the Ancient Greek text, διατροπή, means disgust, and appears twice within a few columns.

Human connection

The team are delighted with the initial results. Project leader Stephen Parsons said the researchers are "confident we will be able to read pretty much the whole scroll in its entirety".

Parsons is the head of Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition for experts who are trying to unlock Herculaneum scrolls. Last year, Youssef Nader in Germany, Luke Farritor in the US, and Julian Schilliger in Switzerland, won the competition’s $700,000 (£558,000) grand prize after reading more than 2,000 Greek letters from another Herculaneum scroll.

That scroll is thought to have been written by the epicurean philosopher Philodemus. It "covered sources of pleasure, from music to food", and "explored whether pleasurable experiences" were derived "from the abundant or the scarce", such as the "minor or major constituents of a meal", said The Guardian. It's already thought that the scroll currently being studied in Oxford will cover similar philosophical topics.

Meanwhile, Nicole Gilroy, who supervises scrolls' care at Oxford's Bodleian Library, said she was enjoying "that connection with whoever collected them, whoever wrote them, whoever rolled those scrolls up and put them on the shelves", because "there's a real human aspect to it that I just think is really precious".

Archaeologists have uncovered an extravagant private bath complex in Pompeii, shedding further light on the ancient Roman city's grandeur prior to its destruction by Mount Vesuvius in AD79.

You might think a site that has been excavated since the 18th century has "little left to surprise us with", said The Independent. But Pompeii is "the gift that just keeps on giving".

Splendour and esteem

The bathhouse has been described in the sort of language reserved for modern luxury holiday resorts. It housed "hot, warm, and cold rooms" and accommodated up to 30 guests, "offering them relaxation" before entering a nearby banquet hall "adorned with Greek mythology scenes", said Dev Discourse. A large basin within a central courtyard only "enhances the house's splendour", and it's believed to belong to an "esteemed member of society during its final years".

So the venue was "lending itself" to important occasions for the owner to "secure an electoral consensus, promote the candidacy of family or friends", or "merely display their social status", said CNN.

Extraordinary house

The bathhouse is "the latest find to emerge" from this "extraordinary house" in the area of the city known as Regio (Region) IX, said the BBC. Last year, archaeologists uncovered a vast banqueting room with "breathtaking artwork of classical scenes".

Although it was painted black, this was "no grunge-teenager room", said The Independent. Rather it included "exquisitely painted scenes from myth", including one fresco portraying "the king of the gods, Zeus, in disguise as a swan". There was also a smaller, "more intimate" room, where residents of the house would "go and pray to the gods".

Excavations in Regio IX have "yielded" other treasures since they began in February 2023, said The Guardian. These have included a "cramped" bakery where enslaved people were thought to have been imprisoned and "made to produce bread". There is also a laundry, which, like other laundries in ancient Italy, used urine as their "key active cleaning ingredient", said The Independent.

The excavations have also unearthed the remains of 1,000 of the city's ancient inhabitants, including two bodies inside a private residence within the bathhouse – a woman estimated to have been between 35 and 50 years old, clutching jewellery and coins, and a much younger man.

Cheek by jowl

The contrast between the drudgery of a hot, crowded bakery or urine-soaked laundry room and the lavish bathhouse show that "two very different styles of life" are "set cheek by jowl with one another" in Pompeii, said The Independent. This was "often the norm" in ancient Roman cities, which had "no luxury leafy suburbs separate from the industrial areas of town", but a "much more mixed up" and "starkly contrasting, urban fabric".

"Every day here is a surprise," Dr Anna Onesti, director of the excavation, told the BBC, ahead of this evening's BBC Two documentary "Pompeii: The New Dig". "Sometimes in the morning I come to work thinking that it's a normal working day – and then I discover we found something exceptional."

2025 is looking good for travelers ready to check into someplace new. That might mean heading to Rome to see how the Orient Express handles luxury accommodations off the tracks or trekking to Uganda for an unforgettable stay among the gorillas. Whatever the type of hotel experience, you should be able to find it at one of these eight fresh properties.

One&Only Moonlight Basin, Montana

The first One&Only resort in the United States is coming to Montana. The hotel, located on the northwest side of Lone Mountain, will offer "direct gondola access to Big Sky's 5,800 acres of piste, as well as top-tier mountain golf," Elite Traveler said, in addition to kayaking, biking and other outdoor activities. Guests can expect comfortable rooms with fireplaces, floor-to-ceiling windows, leather furnishings and local art, with amenities like a hidden whisky shack in the forest and wellness treatments inspired by the wilds of Montana.

Orient Express La Minerva, Rome

When it opens this spring, Orient Express La Minerva will technically be the newest hotel in Rome, but its roots were planted long ago, in the 17th century. La Minerva, built for a wealthy family in 1620 and turned into an inn 200 years later, is the first hotel under the Orient Express brand. The "meticulously curated" property "highlights Rome's rich history," CNN said, and is steps from the Pantheon. Rooms feature king-size beds and marble bathrooms, and for a treat, book a signature suite with a private terrace, turntable and vinyl record collection.

Portrush Adelphi, Northern Ireland

Renovations are in full swing at Portrush Adelphi, a boutique hotel opening in April next door to the storied Royal Portrush Golf Club. Now part of Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts, the seaside property will "cater to golf enthusiasts," the Belfast Telegraph said, with fully revamped guest rooms and common areas. An on-site Italian grill and bar and concierge who will set up tee times round out the hotel's updated offerings.

Salterra, Turks & Caicos

Salterra offers a new way to experience Turks & Caicos. The property, scheduled to open in February, sits on South Caicos, far from the most populous areas of the archipelago. Each room is decorated in muted tones, with wood finishings and large windows to soak up the views. The nearby Salinas salt flats inspired the hotel's design, and an in-house "saltmelier" will be on hand to take guests to the Salinas boardwalk to learn about the island's history of salt production and guide them through a sea salt tasting.

Sanctuary Gorilla Forest Lodge, Uganda

Prepare to be awed when Sanctuary Gorilla Forest Lodge opens in May. Deep in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, this luxe 10-tent property is not only a great base camp for gorilla trekking but is often a stop for gorillas passing through the area. The comfortable accommodations include en-suite bathrooms with a bathtub and shower and private decks, where you can relax after a day of adventure, like taking a game drive through Queen Elizabeth National Park or hiking through the forest to meet members of the Batwa tribe.

Skyridge, Alberta, Canada

Glamp your way through all four seasons inside one of the micro-cabins at Skyridge, opening in January. This year-round, adults-only resort in the town of Canmore has two types of accommodations: the Sky Box and SkyGlass, an innovative structure with floor to ceiling windows for unobstructed views of the stunning Canadian Rockies. At 302 square feet, the cabins are designed for two guests and have everything necessary for "roughing it" in style, including a plush king-size bed, bathroom, kitchen with stovetop and microwave, and heating and air conditioning to keep glampers warm during the winter and cool during the summer.

The Sundays, Hamilton Island, Australia

The Sundays, opening in April, embraces its prime position in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef. The hotel's 59 rooms have been "conscientiously designed," Vogue Australia said, and the "calming combination of ocean and sand tones" act as an "extension of the beach surroundings." An oceanfront swimming pool and water's-edge restaurant and bar add to the "laidback lavishness" of the property.

Veranó San Juan, Puerto Rico

A 1950s office building in San Juan's vibrant Santurce neighborhood is getting a second act as Veranó, a stylish boutique hotel. Set to open its doors in April, Veranó will have 40 sleek rooms and suites, the City House restaurant and a rooftop bar perfect for grabbing a drink to enjoy at sunset. The property sits on the Avenida Ponce de León, amid shops, restaurants and art galleries and close to several beaches.

What happened

Plaster casts of calcified Pompeii residents have long been used by archaeologists to tell the stories of the last, desperate moments of ancient Romans before they were buried and preserved in pyroclastic ash from Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. But new DNA evidence shows that many of those stories are wrong, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

Who said what

A team of U.S. and European researchers conducted genomic testing on skeletal remains embedded in 14 casts undergoing restoration, including two people embracing and the four-member "Family in the House of the Golden Bracelet." The presumed nuclear family — including a mother wearing the distinctive bracelet, with a child on her lap — turned out to be four unrelated males, the researchers said. At least one of the entwined "Two Maidens," long believed to be sisters or a mother and daughter, was a male, and the pair were not related. Many of the calcified Pompeiians appear to have immigrated, by choice or force, from the eastern Mediterranean or North Africa.

"Sometimes, what you think you see is not what it is," said Harvard geneticist David Reich, one of the leaders of the study. This "new scientific tool" of ancient DNA analysis reminds us "the past is, as the cliché goes, an undiscovered country." Scientifically revealing "the actual lives of the victims" is "much more respectful than just using them as props for storytelling," said Estelle Lazer, an archaeologist who previously used CAT scans and X-rays to analyze the casts, to The Washington Post.

What next?

The new discoveries will help researchers better understand not just Pompeii but also gender and migration in the Roman Empire.

Riding the tram into Rome, I felt a sense of joy. Seated among stylish Italians, I was on my way to see the city for the first time. The idea for the trip came to me after reading an article on solo travel. I have always wanted to go to Rome, so I'd decided it was time to seize the day.

On arrival at citizenM, a boutique hotel on the edge of the city's historic Jewish district, I was met by Italian artist UNO's stunning hand-painted mural. After a no-fuss check-in, I got to my room, which was refreshingly air-conditioned and had views over the rooftops.

I then set off on my mission: to explore as much of Rome and the Vatican City as I could in 48 hours.

What to see and do

The centre of Rome is easy to navigate on foot, and being here alone means you can enjoy the sights at your own pace. I would recommend organising tickets for the Colosseum in advance, and opting for an audio guide means you can fully tune into the 2,000-year-old surroundings and be transported back to the time of the gladiators.

Another place where I felt truly immersed in Rome's history was Circus Maximus. Imagining chariots racing around the stadium became a reality when I stumbled upon a Roman re-enactment to mark the city's birthday.

Next, it was time to visit the Vatican City. Although the queue for St Peter's Basilica was long, it was incredible to walk around, and waiting in line was the perfect opportunity to chat to other tourists, and find out what brought them here. When it started to rain, the man next to me gallantly offered me his raincoat.

The hotel

Inside your citizenM room are all of the basic necessities plus some added luxuries such as mood lights and electric blinds. One thing to be aware of is that to maximise the space the beds in most of this hotel's rooms are positioned against the wall which could become annoying if there's more than one of you staying. For a solo trip, though, it was ideal.

CitizenM Isola Tiberina is directly on the River Tiber, in a perfect location for exploring all of Rome's major sights as well as some of the quaint, lesser-known ones. Crossing the Tiber takes you to the picturesque cobbled streets of Trastevere, beautiful both day and night.

The rooftop bar at citizenM is the perfect spot to retreat to after a long day's walking. The terrace overlooks the local area which, considering it's so central, is very peaceful. Serve yourself a glass of wine Vagabond-style, sit back and watch the starlings darting about in the evening. At night, Rome glows.

Where to dine and drink

One of my favourite things about Rome was the snack bars with enticing treats such as suppli (a kind of arancini only found in Rome). A traditional bakery called Il Forno in Campo de' Fiori was recommended to me for thin, crunchy, Roman-style pizza. I grabbed a slice and a limonata and enjoyed them perched on a fountain in the square.

As a treat and because I had walked so much and needed a rest, I took myself to a nail bar seconds away from citizenM called GxBar. I also loved exploring all of the trinkets and clothes at Be C which describes itself as a shop "for curious people".

Near the hotel, I found the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome's oldest church, in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. I stayed for a short, informal service which felt like such a special thing to do on my last day. For dinner, Ginger serves up modern, healthy dishes and felt welcoming for a solo diner.

As I spent only two nights in Rome, I didn't get to see everything, but I would love to come back. On my list for next time are the Sistine Chapel, more of Rome's Jewish quarter and trying a plateful of good carciofi alla romana (Roman-style artichokes). Until next time, Rome.

Kaye was a guest of citizenM Isola Tiberina. Rooms start at €218 per night.

It is no secret that New York City has been dealing with a critical influx of migrants, and Mayor Eric Adams is now looking to a city 4,200 miles away for a solution. Adams recently traveled to Rome and met with Italian leaders on ways to solve New York's migrant crisis. The three-day trip, which took place in mid-May, included meetings with Pope Francis and Italian leaders from other religions, as well as Roman city officials. 

Beyond meetings, Adams also visited facilities set up by Rome to house migrants and asylum seekers. He was impressed by "how fast they're able to cycle the migrants and asylum seekers out of the welcome center," Adams said in a press briefing, noting that within two months, Roman officials "target to get folks into working trades, teaching them basic Italian and moving them forward through the system." 

The mayor said that he would take a number of ideas he found in the Italian capital and work to implement them in the City that Never Sleeps. But what specific takeaways from Rome can Adams use in New York City? 

What did Adams do in Rome? 

Beyond a meeting with the pope, as well as other Christian and Jewish leaders, Adams also "[attended] the World Meeting on Human Fraternity, where he discussed with world leaders city and international issues," said Spectrum News NY1. While mayors of American cities often travel abroad, Adams reportedly used the visit to specifically highlight problems within New York. 

While the migrant crisis was his most pressing issue, Adams also made the most of his time viewing ways in which New York's infrastructure could be improved — the Roman way. This included a trip to Rome's famed Colosseum and nearby metro station, where he found that Rome is "using advanced technology" to create improved subway system tunnels "that could be helpful in New York," said Spectrum. Adams' most notable political sit-down was likely a meeting with his counterpart in Rome, Mayor Roberto Gualtieri, where the pair discussed asylum issues.  

What ideas from Rome could Adams implement in New York City?   

The main takeaway Adams seemed to acquire was that migrants who arrive in Rome "from countries including Syria and Sudan are processed, take Italian lessons and receive health care before being sent out for job opportunities," said The New York Times. Adams "said he wanted help from the Biden administration to develop something similar in New York," and has "called on the federal government to expedite work permits and relocation assistance for migrants." This has not been the first time that Adams has appealed to the White House for help, as he has previously admitted that the migrant overflow in New York City has reached a boiling point. But he seemed to find a shining light in Rome. 

"What really jumped off at me and my conversation with the mayor is how quick they are able to work," Adams said to reporters, per Politico. As a result of being taught the country's language, migrants to Italy "are allowed to work within a short period of time, anywhere from two months. You are able to really be a part of the society," Adams said. 

While Italy has had its own struggles with migrant influxes, the "idea is full integration," Claudio Betti, the assistant to the president of the Community of Sant'Egidio, a group helping to organize migrants in Italy, said to the Times. Betti "[believes] that his organization could help inspire New York as the city confronts the challenges posed by the migrant crisis." 

There are also "underused sites in economically deprived areas like East New York in Brooklyn that could be rebuilt with a focus on arts and culture," but that could also be used to build thriving migrant communities, said the Times. This includes "places in the city that we can actually renovate and change that entire space to become a place where people come together," said Adams. 

Even as Adams looks for solutions overseas, the migrant issue in New York City does not appear to be dissipating. Since last spring, the city "has taken in more than 175,000 migrants," and "immigration remains a major political issue ahead of the 2024 presidential election," Newsweek said. 

A viral social media trend last year suggested the Roman Empire is frequently in men's thoughts. Now, an Ancient Roman's digital footprint is in the headlines too. 

Fourth-century ruler Constantine, who was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, is living up to his moniker of "Constantine the Great" with a "massive" new statue in Rome, said The Associated Press (AP). 

Authorities unveiled the 13-metre-high structure on Tuesday: a replica of a statue of Constantine from about AD312, created using 3D modelling technology from scans of the nine remaining original "marble body parts". 

Body parts and 'British wizardry'

For more than 500 years, visitors keen to see the "colossal statue" that once graced Rome's Forum have "made do with the bits and pieces stacked in a courtyard of the Capitoline museum", said The Times. These remains, dug up in 1486, comprise an "enormous marble head with staring eyes", feet, an elbow, a shin, wrist, knee, hand and an arm.

But with 3D scanning, research and "some British wizardry", artist Adam Lowe managed to recreate the whole statue at his Factum Foundation workshop, a Madrid-based non-profit that makes digitally reconstructed replicas of cultural masterpieces.

"Its scale is breathtaking and it is very emotional to see Constantine looking out across Rome again," said Lowe, whose reproduction is being displayed at the Capitoline Museums in Italy's capital.

'The violence of power'

Historians believe the original statue depicted the god Jupiter, before Constantine had it rededicated to himself. 

"What was frustrating is that there is a statue of Jupiter at the Hermitage in St Petersburg we would have liked to scan," said Lowe, "but couldn't because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine."

"Jupiter would have had a beard, and on the face of the statue you can see traces of a beard," Salvatore Settis, an archaeologist and art historian who worked with Lowe, told The Times. The beard was chipped off to make it resemble clean-shaven Constantine.

Despite the loss of godlike facial hair, the statue still "inspires awe in the smaller viewers below", said news agency AP – just as Constantine intended, according to officials.

"In this statue there's not just beauty, there's the violence of power," said Settis, representing the Fondazione Prada, the cultural arm of the Milan-based fashion house that paid for the project. 

A copy of the reproduction, funded by British investor Jonathan Ruffer, has also been made, and will be displayed in the County Durham town of Bishop Auckland.  

That's more fitting than it sounds, Lowe told The Times, because Constantine was running the forces patrolling Hadrian's Wall and was proclaimed emperor in York.

The pandemic forced people to embrace the hermit lifestyle. Then, in 2023, travel came back with a vengeance. The phenomenon was dubbed revenge travel, in which people reclaimed lost pandemic time by taking notably exotic and elaborate trips. But many destinations struggled to manage the heightened influx of tourists, and some governments actively took measures to limit the quantity of visitors. The lesson: Overtourism can be just as harmful as undertourism to a community, causing environmental destruction and pressure on local communities and resources. 

More is not always merrier

The term "overtourism" is fairly new. It describes "too many people in one place at any given time," according to National Geographic. The exact number constituting "too many" varies from place to place, of course. "An accumulation of economic, social and environmental factors determine if and how numbers are creeping up," the outlet explained. 

The problem with too many tourists is that the sheer volume of visitors can displace the local community but also turn the destination unpleasant for tourists themselves. According to Forbes, "a number of the most iconic destinations have become unlivable for local residents and overcrowded, unsafe and uncomfortable for visitors."

Many popular European destinations fell victim to exactly this. "Tourists are waiting more than two hours to visit the Acropolis in Athens. Taxi lines at Rome's main train station are running just as long," reported The Associated Press adding that "that crowds get backed up crossing bridges — even on weekdays." Accommodating visitors also compromises housing for local residents. "Renters are being evicted by landlords in favor of turning properties into holiday lets, and house prices are escalating as a result," explained National Geographic. "As visitors and rental properties outnumber local residents, communities are being lost." 

Along with crowding destinations, overtourism can damage the environment. Traveling on a long-haul flight requires the use of fossil fuels and releases emissions. Once tourists arrive at their destination, there is more likely to be trash and debris left behind when they depart which can pollute landscapes and waterways. "So many people flying into the same place degrades local ecosystems and natural defenses against the effects of climate change," noted Energy Monitor. Coral reefs, for example, have been degrading faster because more people are coming into contact with them. 

For destinations recovering from disasters, like Maui, Hawaii, overtourism complicates the process of grieving and rebuilding. Hawaiian residents have been vocal in opposing tourism in general but especially following the devastating wildfires. The island has also been under a water conservation notice because of "hotels and resorts taking up [the residents'] share of the water," ABC News reported. As Tobias Jones wrote in The Guardian, "Sites are nothing more than the backdrop for our selfies because we go places not to learn from them, but just to post and boast to others that we’ve been there."

Closing the gates

The growing number of tourists in various locales has caused some governments to take matters into their own hands, implementing methods to cap the number of visitors. A few, like Amsterdam and Venice, banned cruise ships, citing the cruisers' environmental impact. In addition, starting in 2024, Amsterdam will also implement new housing rules, "which aim to increase the housing supply for students, teachers and trainee police officers," Time Out reported. The endgame: more resources for locals, not just for visitors.

Fines and taxes are one of the most common methods for keeping visitors out. Venice implemented a number of fines as well as a day-tripper fee, and Japan is planning on creating a tourist tax and raising transportation costs. In doing so, the country is taking responsibility for "preserving nature, history and culture and passing them on to the next generations," Shunji Mukai, an official of Japan's Miyajima Island planning and coordination division, told Euronews. Other places like the Acropolis in Greece and Machu Picchu in Peru are placing caps on the number of daily visitors. 

Overtourism tends to be an especially acute problem during the busy seasons, like summer. Encouraging travel during other times of the year could ease the strain on some of these destinations. Also, "encouraging more sustainable travel and finding solutions to reduce friction between residents and tourists," could reduce the impact on both the environment and communities, according to National Geographic, along with "promoting alternative, less-visited spots."

Rome is a history lover’s paradise. The city is so chock full of ancient relics chronicling its 3,000-year history that it is nearly impossible to carry out building works without unearthing something precious worth preserving. Projects are frequently delayed, sometimes for years. The city broke ground on its third metro line, Metro C, 16 years ago, and has yet to open a single station because engineers keep digging up antiquities. By comparison, the world-famous Colosseum, a hulking amphitheatre constructed from 100,000 cubic metres of stone, was built in just eight years.

It is a small wonder then that the Palazzo Naiadi hotel in central Rome has managed to complete a refurbishment after recently being acquired by luxury hotel brand Anantara. The property sits atop the ruins of what was once the largest thermal bath complex in ancient Rome. “If we want to change a light, we have to call the cultural institute,” said Edoardo Alaimo, the hotel’s marketing and communications manager.

But the renovations have been worth the tedium. With its chic new lobby bar, modern fine dining restaurant, lavish spa facilities, and a stunning rooftop bar sure to lure the city’s young partygoers, the facelift has propelled the Palazzo Naiadi into the future while delicately retaining its rich connections to the past.

Why stay here

Luxury and location are the obvious appeals of the Anantara Palazzo Naiadi. Its resplendent white marble facade is “arguably the grandest hotel entrance in Rome”, said Rebecca Winke in The Telegraph, and the gracefully curved portico greets visitors with just the right amount of palatial pomp. Plush velvet lounge furniture beckons guests into the brand-new expansive lobby bar where they can sneak admiring glances at the hotel’s impeccably styled clientele while enjoying a glass of wine or one of the bartender’s creative signature cocktails. An ornate chandelier made from Murano glass glistens above it all, one of many thoughtfully curated embellishments throughout the property that infuse it with Italian authenticity.

The hotel is situated in Rome’s Esquilino neighbourhood, about a five-minute walk from the city’s Termini train station. Travelling to other neighbourhoods – or even other cities – is a breeze, but many must-see sites are also within walking distance. That is, if you can ever bring yourself to leave the hotel.

Rooms and suites

The Anantara Palazzo Naiadi has 238 rooms spread across the main building and the so-called Clementino wing, named for Pope Clement XI, who commissioned it as a grain store for the Vatican in 1705. Many rooms have a regal feel, with high ceilings, thick carpets, and gold embellishments throughout. Those located in the Clementino wing still feature the original wooden roof. The presidential suite, which I’m told has hosted both the Dalai Lama and Sophia Loren, comes with a private butler service and a massive Jacuzzi.

My spacious junior suite was more humble, but still lavish, down to the lavender pillow mist on the nightstand. Glazed double doors opened onto a private balcony overlooking the bustling Piazza della Repubblica and the Fountain of the Naiads, the perfect perch from which I could watch the world go by while devouring a creamy ricotta and sour cherry tart adorned with gold leaf – a delicious welcome gift from the house chef and a preview of the meal that was to come.

Eating and drinking

This hotel prides itself on its culinary offerings. The crown jewel is Ineo, a fine dining restaurant where “global nomad” executive chef Heros De Agostinis treats guests to an eclectic tasting menu featuring dishes that incorporate flavours from his travels. The red raw Sicilian prawns in a refreshing mandarin ceviche delighted my pescatarian palate, but I couldn’t help eyeing the artisan spaghetti cooked in rabbit stock that adorned the plates of my omnivorous tablemates.

The sommelier expertly selected wine pairings for the party that complemented our various dietary requirements. My favourite was the Stephanie Gewürztraminer, a gorgeous white from the Nicolussi-Leck winery in northern Italy and quite possibly the best wine I’ve ever tasted. It smelled like lychee and honeysuckle but wasn’t too rich or sweet, and it paired well with the black cod with vin jaune sauce. Because I ordered another glass, I know it also went nicely with dessert: yoghurt parfait with green apple and red beetroot gaspacho. I was almost too full to enjoy the sweet selection of homemade macarons that followed – almost.

After dinner, guests should take the lift to the revamped rooftop restaurant and bar, Seen by Olivier, for a nightcap. Those seeking nightclub vibes will love the resident DJ on the decks, though if you need a quiet moment of zen head over to the poolside and take in the breathtaking view of the city skyline.

In the morning, the hotel’s La Fontana restaurant, with its sprawling breakfast buffet, is the perfect place to start the day with a cappuccino and a homemade Roman pastry filled with whipped cream. Though if you’re a bit more carb-conscious than I, there are plenty of healthier options on offer, too.

Things to do

The hotel has curated a handful of signature experiences. The “Eat, Pray, Love” package takes guests on a three-hour guided tour of some of the city’s hidden historical gems and quiet vantage points. It can be done by foot, but you’ll see far more if you opt to travel by Vespa sidecar or, as I did, an electric golf cart. Their compact size is perfect for squeezing down quiet cobbled back streets to lesser-known attractions, like the San Pietro in Vincoli church, where Michaelangelo’s statue of Moses is tucked away at the back.

The last stop on our tour was a family-owned bakery in Trastevere called Biscottificio Innocenti, where biscotti are toasted to perfection in a vintage oven from the 1950s. The shop wasn’t empty – the locals were stocking up on their favourite sweets – but it wasn’t packed with tourists, either. The experience was satisfyingly authentic. Other experiences curated by the hotel include an Italian cooking class, a private guided tour of the Vatican Museums or the Colosseum, and a “Diocletian Bath ritual” at the hotel’s lush new spa.

The trendy Monti neighbourhood is about a 10-minute walk away, where you can meander through thrift stores, sip an al fresco coffee, and enjoy the area’s bohemian vibes. South-east of the hotel is the historic Santa Maria Maggiore papal basilica. But the must-see attraction is the Diocletian Baths, the remains of which are located just across the piazza from the hotel. In its heyday the complex could accommodate 3,000 people and was the centre of Rome’s social scene. Visitors can tour the ruins of the massive swimming pool and imagine themselves having a soak alongside the patricians of ancient Rome.

Back at the Anantara Palazzo Naiadi, take the lift to the basement. Peer through the glass cutouts in the floor to get a closer look at the mosaics that once lined the floor of the Diocletian Bath complex. They were unearthed during construction of the building and have been preserved by the hotel, a charming reminder of the incredible history that is always just beneath your feet in the Eternal City.

Jessica Hullinger was a guest of the Anantara Palazzo Naiadi Rome Hotel. Rates start from €450 (approx. £387) per night in a deluxe double room for two people on a B&B basis with VAT included. P.za della Repubblica, 48, 00185 Roma RM, Italy; anantara.com

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Exorcists may be inadvertently helping the Devil, according to a pastor. Dan Delzell said that “demon-bashers” could be “a useful weapon in Satan’s arsenal”, reported the Daily Star. The pastor, from the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska, US, said that the Devil might be “unfazed” by the efforts of exorcists. “No-one gets into Heaven by being an exorcist, but only by repenting of your sins and trusting Jesus to wash you clean with the blood he lovingly shed for you on the cross,” he advised.

Rome ‘smelt of patchouli’

Archaeologists in Spain have recovered a Roman perfume from a rare quartz bottle sealed 2,000 years ago, reported The Times. The researchers from the University of Córdoba described it as having a “smell of patchouli”, a fragrant plant native to Asia. The remains of the perfume were found during an archaeological excavation in 2019 in a mausoleum uncovered during the construction of a swimming pool in the southern town of Carmona. “Rome smelled of patchouli,” they said.

Library book returned 96 years late

A book has been returned to a library in the US almost 100 years late, reported Sky News. The copy of “A History of the United States”, by the American historian Benson Lossing, was on loan from St Helena Public Library in California, with a return date of 21 February 1927. However, it was handed back last week, some 96 years overdue. The man who returned the book to the front desk offered no explanation before leaving. Fines were scrapped in 2019 but had they stood, he would have been due to pay $1,756.

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Archaeologists are scratching their heads over how two Roman coins recently discovered on a remote Baltic sea island ended up there.

Researchers from Södertörn University carrying out excavations on Gotska Sandön, an uninhabited island between Sweden and Estonia, unearthed the silver denarii coins, one depicting the emperor Trajan, who ruled at the height of the empire from AD98-117, and the other showing Antoninus Pius, who reigned as emperor from AD138 to 161. Team leader Johan Rönnby, a professor of marine archaeology, said the finds, at a beach site, “raise several questions”.

The area now known as Gotland County in central Sweden was believed to have been inhabited by a North Germanic tribe, and “contact with the Romans was limited”, said Heritage Daily, although “archaeological evidence does indicate an emerging trading network for the latest Roman fashions”.

The Romans sailed as far as Scotland and documented the Baltic area, but “there are no historical records of their voyages that describes the island, making it uncertain whether they were the ones who brought the coins there”, the history site added.

With “no evidence as to how the coins got there”, said The Science Times, researchers have theorised that they might been left by Norse traders, lost in a shipwreck or brought on a Roman ship that voyaged to the far north.

When the coins were brought to the island is also impossible to say, according to Rönnby, who “said coins from the Roman Empire could have stayed in circulation for a long time, because the silver they contained always remained valuable”, Live Science reported. The denarii was the standard coin of Ancient Rome and “their name survives today in the word for ‘money’ in several Latin-based languages, such as ‘denaro’ in Italian and ‘dinero’ in Spanish”.

The newly discovered coins each weigh around four grams, which would have represented about a day’s pay for a labourer when they were minted.

Compared to the ancient Colosseum or the Roman Pantheon, a ten-year-old monument in the heart of Italy’s capital city may at first sound unremarkable. But Villa Agrippina Gran Meliá is a landmark that international visitors to Rome would be wise to take note of.

During the hotel’s reign over the Trastevere neighbourhood, a decade is of course no mean feat when many other accommodations have been shuffled out of the market by property rental companies, or forced to close due to the pandemic’s bludgeoning impact on the tourism industry.

The hotel that stands on the site of a former palace, however, only appears to look to what comes next. With stunning views, luxurious lounging areas and an al-fresco swimming pool that looks onto the Vatican City walls, it’s easy to see why the anniversary of its opening was cause for much celebration in April this year.

Rest

Any seasoned city-breaker will know that location truly is everything when time is of the essence – and it’d be hard to top Villa Agrippina for those keen to make the morning mass at St Peter’s Basilica, or after a romantic starlit stroll along the Tiber. The hotel is ideally located for visitors looking to explore the Eternal City by foot, as it is within a matter of minutes of some of Rome’s most iconic sites.

With around 100 rooms and several suites, one of the only challenges guests will face when planning their trip is which accommodation option to opt for. The Classic and Premium rooms benefit from elegant design, comfortable beds, ample desk-space for those dabbling as a digital nomad, and bathrooms worthy of their own reviews.

Be sure to book a room with a view, and hope that your ensuite has a circular bath with an overhead shower – I promise, it’s the closest you’ll get to experiencing Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus without hopping on a train to Florence.

Then, there are the suites. The Panoramic option does its name proud, with unrivalled views across the city’s skyline and ample space for outdoor recreation – whether that be a dip in the plunge pool to dinners backdropped by the sunset.

The Garden and Pool suites offer privacy for those looking to enjoy the hotel’s green space and bathing offerings unobserved – I was told they have been a hit with a number of Italian celebrities.

Replenish

After a day of sightseeing or shopping, energy levels can be topped up at the hotel’s Clarins Spa. The tranquil space is light and airy, making it a perfect pit-stop to rest up, take a quick dip in the separate bathing area, or indulge in a signature treatment with expert therapists.

Or, if a full stint of relaxation is in order, spend the day by the pool – a rare find in the city. The deck has ample loungers and daybeds for maximal comfort, as well as a smaller Jacuzzi, if floating in the star attraction gets a little strenuous.

You’ll inevitably then need something to snack on – the Gala Pool Bar & Restaurant offers drinks, cocktails and light snacks that’ll do the trick until a feast at Ossimoro Restaurant begins.

Executive chef Luciano Monosilio received a Michelin star at just 27 years-old – and has since been colloquially crowned the “King of Carbonara”. Bringing a contemporary approach to the recipes and culinary traditions that Italy is renowned for, diners can indulge in á la carte or tasting menus that they won’t forget in a hurry.

And as the Amaro bar is just a quick detour on the way back to guests’ rooms, it’d be unwise not to stop in for a speciality mix or classic cocktail. The converted church has had a colourful update, with many plush perches from which to refresh and people-watch.

Get creative

A gem in this Spanish hotel brand’s fast-growing treasure trove, Villa Agrippina is forging closer ties with Gran Meliá Hotel & Resorts’ own heritage and history.

The hotel has partnered with the Real Academia de España to exhibit works by the institute’s residents, with pieces chosen to complement the hotel’s artfully-designed interiors. Browse at your leisure to dip into the city’s creative currents before heading out to explore its world-leading galleries.

Rooms at Villa Agrippina Gran Meliá start from £489 per night on a B&B basis; melia.com

Hundreds of people have demonstrated in the US, demanding an end to the stigma around small penises. The Small Dong March, which took place at Pershing Square in Los Angeles, saw both men and women chant: “End small dong shame!” Two men, who were dressed up as hot dogs, held signs that read “all dongs are equal” and “Jesus had a small dong”. Another, dressed in a penis costume, waved a placard declaring “all dongs go to heaven”.

Diamond worth £2m was almost thrown away

A rare diamond that was once almost thrown in the bin has been valued at £2m. The owner, a woman in her seventies, believes she bought the ring at a car boot sale. As part of a clear-out, she took it to be valued and discovered the stone, roughly the size of a pound coin, was a 34.19 carat colour H VS1, which is exceptionally rare. An auctioneer said she told him “that it nearly went in the bin before her neighbour suggested bringing her items to us to get valued”.

Rome airport to launch flying taxis

Rome airport plans to have flying taxis from 2024, reports CNN. Volocopter said it intends to make Fiumicino Airport the initial site for the rotor-bladed, battery-powered two-seater air taxi it is developing. The craft, which takes off and lands vertically, will take passengers into the city in around 15 minutes, compared with 45 minutes or more by car. “It will be a silent journey and ... the level of emissions will be zero,” said a

Rome has stood proud as a centre of culture for more than two millennium, but now the ancient Italian capital is facing literal collapse as a result of an increasing natural phenomenon.

In just “one of many” massive sinkholes “to blight the Italian capital in recent years”, a Mercedes SUV and a Smart car were swallowed up by a 6m-deep and 20m-long chasm in the Torpignattara district in May, as The Guardian’s Rome correspondent Angela Giuffrida reported at the time.

Another huge sinkhole close to the Colosseum forced the evacuation of a nearby building in January 2020, and just months later, a 2.5m-deep hole opened on the square in front of the Pantheon.

Growing threat

Called voragine in Italian, sinkholes and subsidence had occurred at a rate of about 30 a year in central Rome for most of the past century.

But since 2008, “the annual figure seems to have been consistently more than triple that figure”, said The Local.

According to the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, 175 sinkholes appeared in the city throughout 2018, with about 100 in 2019.

And while the increasing phenomenon has also affected other Italian cities, with some 20 sinkholes recorded in Naples in 2019, Rome is now “the sinkhole capital of Europe”, said The Times.

Roots of the problem

Part of the problem is “simply Rome’s geology”, said The Local. The city is “founded above a floodplain”, and “much of the modern city rests on soft, sandy soil that is easily eroded by water or the vibrations of thousands of cars and scooters traversing the streets daily”.

The “roots” of the issue also lie, perhaps not unexpectedly, “in antiquity”, said Kay Wallace in a blog for la Repubblica.

The modern city stands “20m above the ancient capital”, she explained, and “below it lie hidden many of the ancient city’s villas and temples, and at least one stadium, some excavated, many still to be discovered”.

And below that “lies a subsoil that was itself excavated by republican and imperial Rome to construct its sewers, cisterns and catacombs”.

Many of the sinkholes now occurring in modern Rome can be blamed on these hundreds of ancient quarries, some of which contain tunnels “wide enough to hold a Tube train”, said The Times. The ancient Romans “dug the quarries to reach the harder rock than that on the surface”, the paper continued, but the quarries are gradually being eroded by “underground water torrents as climate change brings more storms”.

Further ancient quarries and cavernous subterranean spaces are being unearthed as builders embark on on new projects. In 2016, a 350m-long quarry was discovered under the Rome neighbourhood of Monteverde “when builders digging a garage realised that there was empty space beneath their feet”.

“We were called in and lowered ourselves on a rope down a drilled shaft,” Adriano Morabito, president of underground exploration association Roma Sotterranea, told The Times. “We found we were in a cavern with 7m-high ceilings. Our torches were not powerful enough to pick out the end of the cavern.”

Morabito said that the space may have served as ancient Jewish catacombs that were obliterated when workers with dynamite began quarrying for rock in 1870.

But while he described the discovery as “one of the most exciting moments of my life”, Rome dwellers affected by the increasing spate of sinkholes may be feeling less enthusiastic about the gaping spaces beneath their city.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. George Monbiot in The Guardian

on smashing the neoliberal consensus

The US was lucky to get Trump – Biden may pave the way for a more competent autocrat

“Joe Biden, in his acceptance speech, called for unity and healing. He would work “to win the confidence of the whole people”. I just hope he doesn’t mean it. If he does, it means that nothing has been learned since Barack Obama made roughly the same speech in 2008. The United States of America is fundamentally divided. It is divided between exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed. There is no unity to be found with kleptocrats and oligarchs. Any attempt to pretend there is will lead to political failure. It will lead not to healing but to a deflected polarisation. If Americans are not polarised against plutocrats, they will be polarised against each other.”

2. Mark Almond in The Telegraph

on the cruel humbling of Armenia

Russia and Turkey's hard power in the Caucasus is a wake-up call for the West

“The Kremlin ruthlessly left Russia’s nominal ally Armenia to its fate as Azerbaijan’s expensively re-equipped military pounded the Armenians with high-end Israeli and Canadian military technology. But above all it was Turkey’s Bayraktar drones and Azeri forces trained, even managed by Turkish, and therefore NATO, standard military advisers what won it for the Azeris. Despite diaspora Armenian protests in Paris and Los Angeles, the leaders of Western democracies hardly even shed crocodile tears for an Armenia that only two years ago was praised as a beacon of democracy. The Caucasus may be where Russia and Turkey’s spheres of influence meet but until recently America and its allies had been very active there promoting sympathetic political forces and not just to secure the energy corridor from the oil and gas states further east. Now the Putin-Erdogan double act has shown once again that when it comes to power politics rather than gesture politics they are the masters of the game.”

3. Jeremy Stern in the New York Times

on fighting for “freedom”

A veteran’s search for meaning

“As with similar past flare-ups, this one was quickly extinguished with the mass incantation that America’s troops “defend our freedom.” It’s nice to know people think that, but in the five years I spent in the U.S. military, I never met anyone who seriously thought that’s what they were doing. Soldiers who talk that way are usually in basic training, or making up for a lack of combat experience, like the civilian who overcompensates for never serving by lighting Colin Kaepernick jerseys on fire. Truth to tell, very little of a soldier’s time is spent guarding the “American way of life,” as the Soldier’s Creed has it, and motivations tend to be fairly straightforward. Shooting an anti-tank missile at a Toyota Hilux, lighting up a fuel tank with a 50-caliber machine gun, getting blisters and dysentery and going to sleep cold and hungry in a dirt hole — these are all part of a rich personal and fraternal experience that doesn’t necessarily require any higher source of inspiration.”

4. VS Pandey in the Hindustan Times

on sluggish modern India

People need to raise the bar for politicians

“India is endowed with the most fertile land available anywhere in the world. We also have the largest arable irrigated land in comparison to any other country. Our water and other natural resources are comparable to the most advanced nations in the world. The quality of our human resource is second to none. We are a democratic country and freely exercise the power and authority to decide our own future. Despite all these positive factors, why do we not perform as well, if not better, than some of the other less endowed countries who became masters of their own destiny almost at the same time when we gained our independence?”

5. Editorial board in The Times

on historical re-revisionism

The Times view on Nero, victim of classical cancel culture: An Apology

“His reputation for narcissistic cruelty is nearly as old as western civilisation itself. No longer. Today we clear the name of Nero, for two millennia taken in vain as a shorthand for the worst of imperial depravity. Far from fiddling while Rome burnt in the hot summer of AD64, new research suggests that the emperor himself may well have been the victim of a fiddle. The Great Fire of Rome, it seems, was not so great after all.”

Archaeologists have mapped a complete Roman city using ground-penetrating radar and without any digging.

The new scanning system revealed highly detailed images of a bath house, theatre, shops and several temples in Falerii Novi, which stood 30 miles north of Rome from 241BC until around AD700, The Guardian says.

The ground penetrating radar (GPR) also revealed the walled city’s network of plumbing, including water-pipe layouts.

The archaeologists, from the universities of Cambridge and Ghent, in Belgium, “were even able to see how the town evolved”, by imaging the site at different depths, reports CNN.

GPR works by bouncing radio waves off objects, and using the “echo” to build up a picture of what lies beneath the ground, reports Sky News.

“Archaeologists believe it could revolutionise our understanding of ancient settlements, making it possible to explore larger areas in higher resolution, including those that cannot be excavated because they are trapped under modern structure,” the broadcaster says.

Using a quad bike, the researchers towed their GPR instruments over the area where Falerii Novi was believed to be buried while taking readings every 5ins (12.5cm).

They describe their findings in full in a newly published paper in the journal Antiquity.

“The astonishing level of detail which we have achieved at Falerii Novi, and the surprising features that has revealed, suggest that this type of survey could transform the way archaeologists investigate urban sites, as total entities,” said study co-author Martin Millett, a professor of classical archaeology at Cambridge.

“We still have so much to learn about Roman urban life and this technology should open up unprecedented opportunities for decades to come,” he added.

The Roman Empire was, at its peak, one of the richest and most extensive political structures in all of western civilisation. By 117AD it stretched from what is now Britain at its northern tip to Egypt in the south, dominating the lives of millions of people across vast swathes of land.

Back in the capital, historians recall an era of opulence for Rome’s aristocracy as wealth poured in from the empire.

Suetonius, the Roman historian, and the closest thing there was to Tatler magazine during the Roman Imperial era, described the scale and splendour of Nero’s pleasure palace as a fitting representation of Rome’s wealth, noting its “vestibule which was large enough to contain a colossal statue of the emperor a hundred and twenty feet high” with a “triple colonnade a mile long”.

The entire house was “overlaid with gold and adorned with gems and mother-of‑pearl” and the dining rooms had “fretted ceils of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfumes.” Nero ruled ok.

Arriving at Hotel Eden offers a taste of the former grandeur of this old fallen Rome, resurrected here with all the magnificence of Nero’s own construction efforts, but with significantly less of his lunacy. To stay in Hotel Eden is truly to experience the Patrician Roman life.

Where is it?

Just a short stroll from the Spanish Steps, Hotel Eden sits above the centre of Rome, next to the Villa Borghese Gardens, and offers panoramic views over familiar monuments, domes and bell towers. In the evening, sunlight streams through your windows as lime green parakeets flit around the windows, and the sun sets over the more distant of Rome’s seven hills while guests sip expertly mixed cocktails in Il Giardino bar.

The hotel is within striking distance of the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Trajan’s Column and the rest of the city’s historical monuments, not to mention the Eternal City’s countless bars, restaurants, cafes, museums and night spots.

The hotel

Being a Dorchester Collection hotel, you will likely have some inkling of the lavishness of the decor, the detail of the design, the quality of the food, and the attentiveness of the staff. Even then Hotel Eden impresses on arrival. The main atrium is an art deco paradise designed by French architects Bruno Moinard and Claire Betaille, with swirling iron bannisters, marble inlay walls, beautiful flower arrangements and behind the main arrival space, the Libreria bar – all plush leather recliners, grand pianos and glowing drinks cabinets.

The grandeur continues in the guest rooms and suites. The first thing you notice is the scent of the room, which throughout seems to have been recently sprayed with some rich Oud. The Week Portfolio’s Junior Suite with View lives up to the billing; the view is tremendous, out any of the four vast windows another highlight of Rome greets you.

Beds are huge and sit in the Goldilocks midpoint between firm and soft, with crisp welcoming sheets. The rooms have all the mod cons you would expect, and anything that you might need or have forgotten that somehow isn’t here already, can be summoned at the touch of a button or with a quick phone call.

Bathrooms and showers are usually where exceptional hotels distinguish themselves from merely good hotels, and Hotel Eden’s exceptionalism is no exception. The bathroom positively gleams, and the shower – a wet room connected directly to the oversized bath – feels very much like something constructed by the civilisation that brought you the aqueduct and whose people incorporated bathing into their everyday lives.

Fine dining

On Hotel Eden’s top floor, Il Giardino Restaurant and Bar offers a whistle-stop tour through the best of modern Roman gastronomy, affordable, high-quality wines and a magnificent view of the city thanks to its floor-to-ceiling windows. Its all-day bar is chic but relaxed, and from your prime spot by the window or on the terrace, you can plot your next steps around the city.

If you can tear your eyes away from the views across Rome, you’ll be treated to a feast. Read our full review here.

The hotel is also the site of the Michelin-starred La Terrazza restaurant, which boasts the same views as its more affordable cousin, but an even more adventurous menu. The white truffle tasting menu will set you back €450 (£400) per person, but stars the unctuous subterranean mushroom at every course.

When to visit

Rome is one of those cities that is good all year round, though in the height of summer it is absolutely sweltering. Fortunately, Hotel Eden is climate-controlled throughout, so will spare you from the worst of both summer and winter. Next year the hotel will celebrate its 130th anniversary, with events going on throughout the year, so there isn't a wrong time to visit per se, but Easter is always a good bet, when the whole city comes alive with celebrations.

Price and booking

Rooms start from €443 (£318) in low season, rising to €602 (£432) in high. Breakfast is not always included. To book, visit dorchestercollection.com/en/rome/hotel-eden or call +39 06 478121

Hotel Eden, Via Ludovisi, 49, 00187 Roma RM, Italy

Archaeologists working in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii have uncovered graffiti that has thrown into question the long-held belief that the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius occurred on 24 August, 79 AD.

Recent excavations of a room in the Regio V area of the city have revealed a charcoal inscription reading “XVI K Nov” – meaning “the 16th day before the calends of November, or October 17 in the modern calendar”, CNN says.

“It is highly probable that it can be dated to the October of 79 AD, and more precisely to a week prior to the great catastrophe,” the archaeology team said in a statement.

Writing for Forbes, bioarchaeologist Kristina Killgrove says the graffiti translates from Latin to read “On October 17, he over-indulged in food” – and was written in charcoal in a section of a home that was in the process of being renovated when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

Every writer on Rome remembers the moment the city first truly inspired them. Edward Gibbon claimed to have come up with the idea for his Decline and Fall while listening to barefooted friars singing vespers one autumn evening on the Capitoline Hill. Percy Shelley composed his verse epic, Prometheus Unbound, looking out over the city’s rooftops from the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. Robert Hughes, more recently, remembered being undone by the beauty of the Piazza San Pietro, stumbling unexpectedly upon Bernini’s famous curving colonnade.

My moment had a different flavour. A disused factory building on the outskirts of Rome had been taken over by students as a party venue. A friend took me along. I could feel the bass from the speaker rig pulsing through the thick evening air. The occasional glow of cigarette lighters illuminated walls of decaying red brick, marked with old graffiti. A thin man in a tracksuit sold beers out of a shopping trolley, and his friend sidled over, without saying anything, took one of my hands and started to dance, round and round in a sort of capering waltz.

It was so incongruous – the thumping electronic music and the old fashioned dance, and the gentle insistence of the stranger leading me round in circles – and I was so taken aback that I only just felt his other hand going for the wallet in my trouser pocket. He wasn’t at all embarrassed that I’d caught him. I had both his hands held tight now, but he didn’t give up trying to rob me: just kept on, half wrestling and half dancing, until I finally managed to escape his clutches and vanish into the dark.

Rome always grabs you in the end. In my case it was just unusually literal. And although I would have hated to be robbed, I somehow didn’t mind the attempt. I’d been in the city as a tourist, which always makes you feel somehow removed from the action, isolated behind your guidebook and your camera lens. That evening felt like the beginning of a new sort of relationship with the Eternal City: more direct; more adversarial; more intimate.

That was a long time ago. Since then, I’ve spent days and weeks taking in the great sights of Rome. It can be a taxing city for those who approach it with a traveller’s to-do list. Do you head for the iconic ancient buildings? The leaping arches of the Colosseum; the Forum; the imperial Palatine. Do you travel as Gibbon did, intoxicated with the ancient city, seeking out “with a lofty step” the spot where Romulus stood, or Cicero spoke, or Caesar fell?

Do you tick off the great works of renaissance art? Michelangelo and Raphael, Pinturicchio, Botticelli, Caravaggio? Do you hunt out the sculptures of Bernini and Canova or try to take in the surviving ancient masterpieces: the Boxer of the Quirinal; the Apollo Belvedere; the Laocoön? In the Vatican Museums there’s a gallery with works by Picasso, Van Gogh and Rodin, which you have to pass through on the way to see the Sistine Chapel. Hardly anyone ever stops in it. Works that would be the crowning glory of another European city, in Rome hardly get a second glance.

Sometimes I think you can sense a slight air of desperation gripping the tourist crowds as they gather at the end of the day in the Piazza Navona or on the Spanish Steps. There’s just so much to see. And people’s lives are so busy now. What Gibbon or Shelley spent weeks doing, modern tourists hope to accomplish over a long weekend.

Perhaps there’s another way to approach the Eternal City. In all my trips there, the most memorable moments have been the unexpected ones, scenes that I’ve stumbled upon almost by chance. I can’t forget the sight of a shepherd with his flock passing by the ruined tombs of the Parco della Caffarella; of starlings looping over the broken arches of the Ponte Rotto; wildflowers growing from the antique brickwork of the old Aurelian walls. I remember children playing football on a winter evening in the suburb of Garbatella; the bars around the foot of Monte Testaccio, a hill built up over centuries by Romans throwing away old oil jars. The art collection of the Villa Borghese is one of the finest in the world, but the best time I ever spent in Rome came after we failed to get a ticket to the exhibition. Instead we spent the afternoon racing round the villa gardens in pedal cars.

Rome’s monuments are iconic. The Pantheon and the Colosseum are impressive in their sheer size, the height of those leaping arches or that famous concrete dome. But the things that really stop me in my tracks these days are smaller scale: grooves worn by cart wheels in the ancient paving of the Via Appia Antica; ancient curses scratched in lead, excavated from the Roman river mud. For thousands of years, people have been working, living and dying in Rome, falling in love, getting ill, raising families, celebrating, and there’s something extraordinary about recognising familiar human needs and emotions over such a span of years. The idea of praying to the rooster-headed demon Abraxas to punish an annoying neighbour, say, may be alien to us, but the feelings that inspired curses like these are as real today as they ever were. The Art of Love, written by the Roman poet Ovid two thousand years ago, could just as well have been created for modern Romans, flirting awkwardly on first dates in the hill town of Frascati as the lights of Rome appear, glimmering from the twilight plain spread out below. The man I saw netting catfish in the shallows of the Tiber one summer afternoon wouldn’t have looked out of place in the time of Romulus.

Rome can be hard work. Travellers’ forums online are full of stories from people who’ve been to Rome and felt exhausted by the queues and the crowds and the overpriced pizza. This is not a new phenomenon. The poet Arthur Hugh Clough arrived in the city as part of a generation of Victorian tourists who had been taught to regard a visit to Rome as an indispensable part of a proper education. Well armed with sun-hats and Murray Guides, most Victorians were enthusiastic sightseers – but not Clough. “Rome disappoints me much,” he complained in verse. “Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it... Would to god the old Goths had made a cleaner sweep of it!"

Travellers who have braved the crush around the Trevi fountain or queued outside Saint Peter’s on a hot August afternoon will be able to sympathise. Trying to “do” Rome in that way, trying to see all the sights and visit all the museums, trying to finish every guided tour, is setting yourself up for failure.

Wrestling with a dancing pickpocket, that night all those years ago, I felt I would never be able to master the Eternal City, not with any number of lists and guidebooks. And perhaps, I thought, that was okay. After that evening, I didn’t try any more to “do” Rome. Instead I hoped simply to let Rome happen to me. Give Rome space, give it the chance to surprise you, and it will prove its place as the richest, most complicated, most beautiful city in the world.

Ferdinand Addis is an author and classicist whose forthcoming book, Rome Eternal City is published in hardback RRP £30 by Head of Zeus, 6 September 2018.

Sheep and goats are to be used to tackle Rome’s overgrown and neglected parks and public gardens, the city’s embattled mayor has announced.

The plan follows years of neglect and budget cuts which have left the Italian capital’s public spaces in a dire state, with grass often chest high and benches covered in vegetation.

Seeking a radical solution, Mayor Virginia Raggi, a member of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement which is poised to form a coalition government in Italy, has now proposed using natural grazers to make the city’s green spaces useable again.

A separate initiative launched in March uses prison inmates to clean up neglected parks.

In fact, Raggi would not be the first mayor to use sheep to keep public spaces under control. Berlin already deploys a small herd of Gotland sheep between May and November to keep down the grass in the gardens of Charlottenburg Palace.

Nevertheless, says The Daily Telegraph, the move has “invited mockery from political opponents”, with Orlando Corsetti, a member of the centre-Left Democratic Party, saying: “Goats and sheep as lawnmowers? It all makes sense.

“Raggi clearly deeply loves animals because she has filled the city with rats, seagulls and wild boar which feed off uncollected rubbish, so a few goats would complete Five Star’s Roman zoo.”

Wild boars have become an increasingly common site on the city’s outskirts.

However, not everyone is so hostile to the idea. A national farming association said there were as many as 50,000 sheep in the countryside around Rome, meaning “the capital can count on a veritable army of natural lawnmowers”.

Two men from Rome have been arrested after a Liverpool fan was attacked shortly before the football club’s Champions League semi-final home match against Roma last night.

The 53-year-old victim suffered a serious head injury and is now fighting for his life at the city’s Walton Neurological Centre, according to Merseyside Police.

Emergency services were called to the Albert pub, near the Kop end of Liverpool’s Anfield stadium, after the two sets of fans clashed” shortly before kick-off, says The Daily Telegraph.

Det Insp Paul Speight said witnesses “report that the victim was hit with a belt and then fell to the ground”.

The two suspects, aged 25 and 26, were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

The pair, one of whom was apprehended inside the ground, were among a total of nine men arrested on suspicion of various offences, “including affray, actual bodily harm and possession of offensive weapons, among others”, reports The Guardian.

BBC Sport’s David Ornstein said the trouble started when a “group of Roma fans arrived via Venmore Street, burst on to Walton Breck Road and attacked, many using belts”.

Liverpool fans claim that up to 20 Roma supporters charged at them and began lashing out. Student Ryan Ellis, 22, said: “It was horrible to see, some had bats and others were swinging at people with belts with buckles out.”

BBC Sport footage showed one fan carrying a hammer, the broadcaster reports.

Liverpool FC said it was “shocked and appalled” and would be offering the seriously injured fan and his family “our full support”.

Police are calling for other witnesses to come forward.

Rome’s official Christmas tree has been compared to a toilet brush after it shed most of its needles within days of being installed in the heart of the city.

The gigantic spruce was intended to be the festive centrepiece of Piazza Venezia, but its wilting, threadbare branches have turned it into an eyesore, with a week still to go before Christmas.

Unimpressed locals have christened the tree "Spelacchio" - “baldy” - in reference to its rapidly thinning foliage. The decidedly un-festive spectacle soon became something of a viral hit:

Even more galling to the city’s taxpayers, the threadbare tree cost the city €48,000 (£42,600).

On Monday, Rome council officials confirmed that the tree was technically dead on arrival, having been severed from its roots in the Dolomite mountain range in north-east Italy and transported to the capital, but that no-one predicted its rapid decline.

The embarrassing episode has sparked a “long distance war of words” between Roman officials and the region who provided the tree, says Corriere della Sera.

Stefano Cattoi, Val di Fiemme’s director of forestry, insisted the spruce was in “excellent health” when it left the region, and that a healthy spruce could last up to six weeks after being felled. “We don’t want to point the finger it anyone,” he said, “but something happened to that tree.”

For their part, Rome’s council has denied any mistreatment that could have caused Spelacchio’s sudden decline and has “launched an inquiry into its untimely demise,” The Local reports.

Depressingly, Spelacchio is not due to be dismantled until after Christmas, meaning “the city is set to watch its tree wither” for the next week, NPR reports.

The Eternal City has had a run of bad luck with its Christmas trees, says The Local, with its lacklustre and under-decked 2016 offering dubbed “the ugliest in the world”.

If you live or work in London, you may not be surprised by the sight of two tall trees made of bronze cradling an 11-ton marble block, the latest work by leading Italian sculptor Giuseppe Penone, which now stands outside Fendi’s flagship boutique in central Rome. Londoners, like New Yorkers and Parisians are accustomed to seeing public artworks of epic proportions:in May, Jeff Koons unveiled a 45ft-tall inflatable sculpture of a ballerina close to the Rockefeller Center; in London, we have Trafalgar Square’s famous fourth plinth, which early next year will support a giant winged bull by Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz. Paris’ Louvre Pyramid was recently made to 'disappear' thanks to giant trompe l’oeil panelling created by French street artist and photographer JR.

In Rome, by contrast, public art funding is often a thorny issue, greeted with reticence by the authorities; there are numerous hoops to jump through in a city already struggling to preserve its heritage sites because of a lack of investment. Penone’s simple but striking work, Leaves of Stone, is therefore a significant one.

The work was commissioned by Fendi, the luxury fashion house that is taking steps to improve the look of the Eternal City. No doubt many of Rome’s annual visitors – estimated at more than seven million in 2016 – are too awestruck by its obvious beauty to notice the deepening cracks in the city’s most iconic monuments; in some cases, they are literally crumbling away. It appears that even Roman concrete (opus caementicium) – for many years a source of fascination to scientists, due to its durability – isn’t quite as eternal as once thought, although 2,000 years is pretty good going.

To wit, last year the city appealed to wealthy investors and companies to pitch in to help rejuvenate cultural heritage sites such the Forum, Circus Maximus and the city’s ancient aqueducts, all of which are in dire need of repair.

Fendi’s commitment to its founding city began long before the council made its SOS call; last year, the fashion house completed a 17-month restoration of the Trevi Fountain. Immortalised by Federico Fellini’s 1960 celluloid masterpiece La Dolce Vita, in which actress Anita Ekberg famously frolics in its waters, the landmark

was deemed by city councillors to be on the verge of collapse before Fendi’s intervention, said to have cost around €2.2million. The newly restored Baroque monument, originally commissioned by Pope Clement XII in 1730, was unveiled during Fendi’s 90th anniversary show in July last year. Models walked across a see-through plexiglass catwalk that had been placed temporarily over the fountain’s turquoise waters, which flow directly from the Acqua Vergine, one of the aqueducts that supplied ancient Rome with water. Considering the fountain’s papal origins and the show’s biblical reference to walking on water, it’s safe to say this project was more than merely a philanthropic gesture on Fendi’s part. Rather, it confirmed the influence of – and importance of providence to – the Italian label that started life in 1925 on Via del Plebiscito, just a 10-minute walk from where Penone’s tree sculpture stands tall on Largo Carlo Goldoni.

Let’s be clear, though: other fashion brands are pulling their weight, too. Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel, funded the restoration of the Ponte di Rialto, the oldest bridge spanning Venice’s Grand Canal, while Florence’s Boboli Gardens will be returned to their former splendour with the help of Gucci, which is pledging €2million to the project. Back in Rome, we have Bulgari to thank for the €1.5million rejuvenation of the Spanish Steps, and luxury shoemaker Tod’s for a whopping €25million injection to repair, clean and restore the Colosseum. The first stage of completion was celebrated last summer with a lavish concert conducted by maestro Zubin Mehta.

It stands to reason that fashion labels are singing their sponsorships loud and proud. Indeed, in June luxury goods magnate François Pinault, who leads the Kering group, announced plans to convert Paris’ 19th-century stock exchange building, the Bourse de commerce, into a modern art museum. His highly ambitious (read: costly) project will be spearheaded by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.

All things considered, then, why did Fendi’s sponsorship of Penone’s new tree sculpture gain as much media attention as Pinault’s grand plan to house his billion-dollar art collection?

For a start, Penone’s is the first permanent and public modern artwork in the centre of Rome. Secondly, Fendi CEO Pietro Beccari hand-picked Penone for the job. "We had a list of four artists," explains Beccari, himself a keen art collector. "I wanted Penone to be the winner. He has the merit of being an Italian artist, and really there is no living sculptor better than him at the moment."

Penone was a member of the late-1960s, early-’70s Arte Povera (Poor Art) movement, which was founded on the principle of aesthetic simplicity achieved through the use of organic and everyday materials. Now aged 70, the artist still works intensely, with just one assistant, casting enormous fallen tree trunks in bronze and marble. He is the ur-craftsman in a contemporary art world that increasingly favours show-stopping creations born of industrial methods, as proven by Jeff Koons’ giant ballerina and indeed JR’s optical illusion 'blanket' over the Louvre.

"My interest in bronze and marble is to do with stability," says Penone via an interpreter. The artist still lives and works in Turin and, despite a career spanning six decades, with his work exhibited worldwide, he speaks little English. "These materials last over a long period of time. They belong to the past and the future. In Rome, we are surrounded by art connected to the rhetoric of power – that of the Roman Empire – but I am interested in Rome’s connection with animism, the intimate nature of man and his relationship with nature."

Whatever you draw from Penone’s Leaves of Stone, which is best experienced up close, its strong but spindly bronze branches incongruously supporting a hefty slab of marble, it’s safe to say Fendi’s choice of artist goes against the grain. Louis Vuitton, which like Fendi is owned by LVMH, recently collaborated with Jeff Koons for its 'Masters' collection: bags and accessories adorned with the works of great artists, including Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Fragonard’s Girl With A Dog. On the arm of a customer, a handbag becomes a mobile artwork; a perversion of kitsch that raises questions about elitism, reproduction and the very concept of a luxury as something exclusive and original.

There’s an interesting duality here, and both artistic collaborations have their marketing – and academic – merits, but Fendi’s message is intentionally more ambiguous. It has less to do with concept, more to do with identity, which sits comfortably with Penone’s own artistic and philosophical motivations. Fendi is binding itself to its original source as a way of preserving its future.

As such, Beccari is taking giant leaps to reclaim Fendi’s Roman roots, and that means making bold decisions that nonetheless sit within a strong cultural remit. One of his first steps on joining in 2012 was to change the logo from Fendi to Fendi Roma – a move that draws on a romantic and celebrated but endangered past, when a ‘Made in Italy’ label was synonymous with world-class craftsmanship. Today, with so much rule bending applied to this one-time stamp of excellence – a garment can be assembled in Italy, but its parts made all around the world – Fendi is affirming its position as an exponent of true workmanship and craft.

"The name of Rome makes people dream," says Beccari. "People come here to discover the beauty of Rome, and as a brand associated with this beauty, we have to use it in a positive way. When customers come to a Fendi store, they want beautiful stories and to share the aesthetic values of the maison. So this is our way to declare that we are not just a brand that produces and sells products; we are a lifestyle."

While modernism is very much the commercial drive of the company – in 2014, it became the first fashion house to live-stream a collection using drones – Fendi is more patently patriotic about its city of origin than, say, Gucci or Valentino. The change of logo is a case in point; another is its choice of headquarters: the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, a huge marble monolith – christened the 'Square Colosseum'– on the industrial outskirts of the city and originally commissioned by Mussolini. Strength, power and autocracy are unavoidable associations when you take over a building with its foundations in fascism, but Fendi’s CEO rejected criticisms of insensitivity, claiming the choice of location was made purely on the merits of the Palazzo’s striking architecture.

To his credit, Beccari has helped drive out Il Duce’s ghost for good. The Palazzo is now one of Rome’s most-visited cultural destinations; its ground-floor art exhibitions – which, this summer, included a retrospective of Penone’s work – have attracted more than 100,000 visitors since Fendi moved here in 2015. Clout seems to have worked in the fashion house’s favour, and in rekindling the aura of a Dolce Vita lifestyle, Fendi has hit just the right balance of bravura and high culture.

Without question, Rome is one of the most beautiful cities in the world to walk in. From the Vatican to the Trevi Fountain, and from the Pantheon to the Coliseum, the city is a wayfarer's delight.

But sometimes a break from sightseeing is required and that's where Eden comes in. Hotel Eden that is, which sits on a quiet street just a stone's throw from the madding crowds pounding up and down the Spanish Steps, and is part of the Dorchester Collection of hotels.

True to its name, Hotel Eden is an oasis for weary travellers. It boasts a gloriously opulent marble interior, three restaurants and blissfully cool air conditioning – essential when the mercury hits 40 degrees.

Eden's top-floor bar and restaurant, Il Giardino, offers delicious food, affordable, high-quality wines and magnificent view of the city thanks to its floor-to-ceiling windows. Its all-day bar is chic but relaxed, and from your prime spot by the window or on the terrace, you can plot your next steps around the city.

If you can tear your eyes away from the views across Rome – you can see both the Vatican and the imposing Altare della Patria monument – you'll be treated to a whistle-stop tour through the best of modern Roman gastronomy.

Executive chef Fabio Ciervo's menu offers a contemporary twist on traditional Roman fare. Foodies will love the 'tapas' style cicchetti – highlights include fried courgette blossom stuffed with oozing mozzarella, meltingly good anchovies and crispy seasoned calamari – but the menu also features pizzas, salads and a selection of Italian salamis.

Feeling as though we had earned it after a marathon morning of sightseeing, my lunch companion and I plunged into the heartier main menu, starting with a plate of rich, creamy burrata, delicately dressed with olive oil. This was swiftly followed by a starter of aubergine ravioli stuffed with mozzarella and baby tomatoes and a simply exceptional linguine rosa with delicious plump prawns.

As the saying goes, when in Rome do as the Romans do, so we opted for the full four-course menu. A main course of chicken paillard came lightly seasoned with rosemary and accompanied by tangy rocket and a tumble of ruby red tomatoes. The tender veal sirloin, meanwhile, was served with piquant lemon and tangy capers. Neither lasted long on our plates.

Keen to see those breathtaking views again, we ordered tiramisus and espressos in the adjacent lounge. We didn't regret it. Il Giardino's twist on the much-interpreted Italian classic comes served with a sweet coffee sauce and fresh berries. And while there are probably as many tiramisus in Rome as there are restaurants, this one feels somehow quintessential.

There's a lot to do and see in Rome and ticking off your to-do list can be a weary business. If you feel a sudden urge to escape the fray, and want superb food, views to die for and snazzy surroundings Il Giardino on the top floor of the Hotel Eden might just be the perfect spot.

Il Giardino, 49 Via Ludovisi, Rome, Italy, www.dorchestercollection.com