Experimental Roma Opens October 10 Off Via Veneto With a Suspended Pool

Experimental Roma welcomes its first guests on October 10, 2026, at 46 Via Ludovisi, just off Via Veneto in Rome. The French group's second Italian hotel, after Il Palazzo Experimental in Venice, sits in a restored former bank building with 82 rooms and suites by interior architect Rodolphe Parente, a restaurant led by Rome-born chef Giovanni Passerini, an Experimental Cocktail Club, and a rooftop with a suspended pool and skyline views toward Villa Borghese and the Colosseum.

Where is it, and why does the street matter?

Via Ludovisi runs beside Via Veneto, the avenue that became shorthand for La Dolce Vita when film stars and paparazzi filled its cafes in the late 1950s. Federico Fellini rebuilt the street at Cinecitta for the 1960 film. Guests who want that address without sleeping on Via Veneto itself get a quieter side street a short walk from Piazza di Spagna and the Swiss Institute, with the city's grand hotels and Villa Borghese still close.

What are the rooms and public spaces like?

Parente's interiors lean on Italian design from the 1950s through the 1970s: warm materials, bright colour, cinematic details and contemporary pieces. The group calls the building a meticulously restored historic former bank, though it has not named which bank. On the roof, La Terrasse runs the bar beside the suspended pool. Downstairs, the Experimental Cocktail Club is positioned as a late-night classics room, the same signature the group runs in its other cities.

Who is cooking?

Passerini, who built his reputation in Paris, returns to Rome to lead Ludovisi e Cadore under a glass roof. The kitchen works with the quinto quarto, the fifth quarter of the animal that Roman cooking has long prized, treated with the polish Passerini is known for. For guests, that means a hotel restaurant that is trying to be a destination in its own right, not just room service with better lighting.

How does it fit Rome's luxury map?

Experimental Group already operates in Paris, London, Venice, Biarritz, Menorca, Ibiza, the Cotswolds and the Alps, with Porto and Comporta still ahead. Rome has been adding international luxury keys at a fast clip, so an 82-key design hotel with a serious chef and a rooftop pool is competing on experience rather than pure key count. Book the opening weeks if you want the Passerini room and a Colosseum-facing swim before the Via Veneto season fills; ask which side of the building faces the roof works if any finishing is still underway.