Art Hotel by The Spanish Steps is an artistically inspired hotel, not only because of its charming location or because it has been built out of an ancient cottage, but because
art is a theme that encompasses the hotel throughout.
Do not expect glaring signs. The entrance is a minimalist corridor imitating the many art galleries lining Via Margutta, a long pedestrian corridor, with the walls lined in shining white marble, paved with white cobbles, and illuminated with a creation by the artist Enzo Catellani, leading to the Hall.
Besides the light, another particular feature of this hotel are the colours. The corridors of the four storeys, which lead to the 46 rooms and suites, are distinguished by four different colours, blue, orange, yellow and green, and these become more intense at the guest entrance. The materials used to line the walls, glass and resin, combine strong colours with transparency, and this amplifies the space. On the ground, strips of light run along the sides of the corridor, and on these are written lines by poets such Garcia Lorca and Octavio Paz.
The eight Roman piazzas In the lunettes of what was once the Chapel where the boarders at San Giuseppe de Merode would gather – and today the highly original Hall that the architects’ contest has transformed into a creative adventure –, Paolo Giorgi was commissioned to execute his conception of Rome’s most famed and popular piazzas. Painted in oil on canvas glued to wood, these crescent-shaped spaces depict such squares as Piazza di Spagna, Piazza Venezia, Piazza del Popolo and the colourful
Campo de’ Fioriin a metaphysical dimension that leaves out the chaotic comings and goings of people and vehicles, in the enchantment of a psychic suspension of great figurative quality. Demanding an upward glance to the ceiling, these eight small jewels provide the setting for one of our structure’s numerous artistic endowments.
The “
Alle arti” triptych
Botti and Mangiarotti’s
Architectural designs contemplated commissioning Paolo Giorgi (
www.Paolo Giorgi.com) to produce a large painting evoking the name of the new hospitality facility: Hotel Art. Giorgi realized this tribute in a triptych, its sides dominated by two vertical canvases with a view of Piazza del Popolo, while a female figure shown from behind pauses in reflection to observe an elsewhere suggesting a faraway distance, an
Infinite in the manner of Leopardi. The large central canvas, on the other hand, evokes Music, Dance, Prose, and Painting, the latter being a succession of masterworks dear to Giorgi by such great past masters as Friedrich or Chardin, Leonardo and Vermeer, all in a psychic atmosphere that is one of the constants in Giorgi’s work when dealing with figures in his interiors.