Rome’s elegant hilltop escape

Finding the perfect place to stay in Rome can be as big a headache as trying to cram all the incredible ruins, landmarks and museums into one trip.

Base yourself bang in the middle of the Italian capital and the place is your oyster — but unless your hotel or apartment has double-glazed windows, or is tucked far enough away from the busy streets, your best-laid sleeping plans could be disturbed at any moment.

Noise isn’t an issue when you bed down at the Rome Cavalieri. This Waldorf Astoria hotel, which has 370 rooms and suites (with double soundproof doors), is perched amid six leafy hectares on Monte Mario, a hill in the west of Rome, still within the city limits, but feeling secluded enough to kid yourself that you’re at a rural retreat. Until that is, you step out on to a balcony and see the domes and spires of the Eternal City below.

It’s not just the hotel’s lofty location that makes an impression. Entering a building whose blocky 1960s exterior has been softened by lush greenery, you almost feel like you’ve walked into an art gallery. Paintings, tapestries and antiques, mostly from the 17th to 19th centuries, decorate the perfumed lobby and the corridors and events spaces that course off it.

After you’ve checked in, you might want to get an audio guide from the concierge and take it all in. There are canvases of Venice, pastoral Italian countryside and stirring seascapes, Renaissance-era scenes featuring cherubs and nude men and women in passionate embraces. I see Chinese emperors. Greek gods. A gilded clock case crafted by Andre-Charles Boulle, who was the cabinetmaker for King Louis XIV of France.

Enhancing the swish aura are the gleaming wine and fashion boutiques and the jazzy piano notes floating from the Tiepolo terrace-lounge bar (which is a prime spot for sushi and afternoon tea). Some of the hotel’s lavish suites, with hot tubs on terraces, Swarovski crystal bathrooms and Andy Warhol artworks, are fit for royalty and can set you back over $15,000 a night.

More affordable — we’re talking from about $300 in low-season — are the premium and deluxe rooms, which are more old-fashioned elegance than cutting-edge style.

Mine (No. 564) has a pleasingly comfy king-size bed, plush blue and gold-toned carpet, walnut-wood wardrobes, marble bathroom with Salvatore Ferragamo Tuscan Soul products, and a sitting area with plump banana-hued armchairs.

It’s next to a private balcony that looks out on to a garden furnished with sculptures, lawns, pine and palm trees (some rooms have city views instead). The garden pool area is an enticing spot for relaxing, sunbathing, cooling dips, cocktails and gelato.

A tree-shaded jogging route snakes around the complex, and there are two clay tennis courts for hire. Indoors has a fitness centre and grand spa, where treatments include aromatherapy and massages infused with chocolate and caviar, honey and spice.

Another highlight of the hotel — and one that even draws Romans up Monte Mario — is La Pergola, the city’s only three Michelin star restaurant, “a temple of gastronomy” run by German chef Heinz Beck on the Cavalieri’s 9th floor.

You can order a la carte or opt for a seven or 10-course menu ($385 to $450, or €250-290), which features dishes like red shrimp with quinoa, curry sauce and dehydrated black salsifies, and lamb with offal sauce, scent of fennel flower heads and nettle cream.

Complementing the cuisine — and wine from chief sommelier Marco Reitano — are the panoramas. Stepping out on the terrace, Rome and the Vatican spread out before you, with the vast dome of St Peter’s Basilica utterly entrancing.

The hotel can arrange all sorts of activities for you, including visits to private Roman palaces, drives in Ferraris and Lamborghinis and a round at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, a venue for the Ryder Cup in 2023.

We go on a thrilling vintage Vespa tour around Rome, then spend an afternoon sightseeing on foot in and around the Colosseum district. You can return to the hotel on one of the complimentary hourly shuttle buses that connect the Cavalieri with the city centre.

You’re dropped off — and picked up — near Via Vittorio Veneto, one of the settings for perhaps the most quintessential Roman film of all time: Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.

Steve McKenna was a guest of Regent Seven Seas Cruises. They have not seen or approved this story.