Some hotels claim history. This one is literally standing on it. The Anantara Palazzo Naiadi sits on Piazza della Repubblica in central Rome, and down on its minus-one level you can see the remains of the Baths of Diocletian, built between 298 and 306 AD. The complex once sprawled over 13 hectares and could hold 3,000 bathers, and Anantara has woven that legacy into its spa, which runs a Diocletian-inspired ritual of olive oil, honey, salt and laurel exfoliation, a mud wrap and a full-body massage.
The building itself keeps giving. The fourth floor was Rome's last public granary, commissioned by Pope Clemente XI in 1705, while the lobby stacks two-storey colonnades, elaborate stuccoes and Murano-glass chandeliers. Across the square, the Fountain of the Naiads anchors one of Rome's grandest late 19th-century fountains, and Michelangelo's Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli sits opposite — designed when the master was 86.
There are 232 rooms across several categories. The Junior Suite Piazza View pairs old-world charm with a marble bathroom, 50-inch TV, espresso machine, a one-way luxury car transfer and butler service — apparently a favourite of film stars. The headline suite is the Sophia Loren Presidential Suite, the only suite in the world dedicated to the actress, created with her son Edoardo Ponti after Loren celebrated her 90th birthday on the hotel's rooftop. Expect a sprawling living and dining area, Jacuzzi, in-suite spa treatments and cocktails — at roughly A$32,000 a night. Entry-level rooms start around A$700.
The big food news is INEO, the hotel's restaurant, which picked up a Michelin star this year. Roman-born chef Heros De Angostinis has cooked across Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and his menu reads like a travel diary: seasonal, sustainable ingredients and techniques borrowed from the cultures he's worked in, served as vivid, precisely spiced dishes on individual plinths. Don't skip the white-gloved bread trolley. For something more casual, SEEN by Oliver on the rooftop does seafood and international comfort food with city views, and there are cooking classes, private dining and poolside cocktails too.
The location makes it easy to get out. The hotel arranges after-hours access to closed sections of the Vatican Museums with an art historian, Vespa tours and visits to the catacombs, those second-to-fifth-century underground burial grounds. For a taste of local Rome, the writer joined Bonsy in Tour around Testaccio, a residential quarter built on an artificial mountain of broken amphorae shards dumped there centuries ago. Stops included Maritozzo cream buns at family-run Linari and the legendary Mori e Vai sandwich stall, plus a tasting at DOL – Taste A'ccio, a room carved inside Monte Testaccio where cheese is aged for years in the cave's natural cool.
Check-in is 3pm, check-out midday, and the address is Piazza della Repubblica 48-49. Whether it's a one-night splurge or a longer base for exploring, the appeal is obvious: five-star comfort stacked on nearly two millennia of history, in one of Rome's most central squares. Source: Karryon.
