Our story

A hotel, with its constant coming and going of arriving and departing guests, is a great window onto the world: people of every kind, from every country, speaking every language—cheerful people and sad ones, delightful guests and others less so. In a hotel, everything happens and more, in a truly fascinating carousel. It is so pleasant and captivating that my family has devoted itself to this profession for many years with enthusiasm and satisfaction, despite the continuous and tireless commitment it requires.

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My sister and I were therefore born and raised, quite literally, in a hotel, and we learned to live with and love every aspect of hospitality.

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In the early 1950s, my family successfully managed a well-established hotel business in a town in Umbria. My father, however, nurtured the desire to open a similar venture in a larger city: Rome. And so the entire family—grandparents included, and with us still very young—decided to move to the capital with the aim of opening a hotel and continuing our family tradition. After numerous inspections in different parts of the city, it was decided that the most suitable area for this new venture would be the one adjacent to the Vatican City, specifically the Aurelio district.

The proximity to the Vatican, with its imposing basilica, was certainly a strong attraction. Added to this was the consideration that this area was—and still is—the point where all the car traffic entering Rome via the Via Aurelia converges, which at the time represented the main route along the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy (the Autostrada del Sole had not yet been built). This was undoubtedly a very favorable factor at a time when Italians were beginning to travel more and more by car.

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Moreover, despite its closeness to the Vatican, the area was still devoid of hotels, though it was clearly destined for rapid tourist development. At the time, it had a distinctly rural appearance, with a succession of fields bordering Via Gregorio VII, which then consisted of a single roadway with traffic flowing in both directions. Anyone entering Rome from the Via Aurelia would see this landscape until, drawing ever closer to the city center, they could admire the majestic dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.

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It was therefore decided that it was precisely at this point that our new hotel venture would come to life—one that could bear no other name than “Hotel San Pietro”, the first and only hotel in Rome to be called by this name (1955).

From the very first days after opening, my father’s predictions proved to be correct. Tourists traveling by car were becoming increasingly numerous. Many arrived in Rome via the Via Aurelia, approached the city center passing in front of our hotel and, upon seeing the dome before their eyes, felt they had arrived and happily stopped to look for accommodation. My father used to tell me that, just as workers were installing our new sign and had mounted only the first three letters (“HOT…”), our very first guests arrived asking for a room.

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Our decision to open a hotel in that area—then still scarcely urbanized and considered by many to be sheer folly—turned out instead to be a very fortunate choice.

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My father would always smile when recalling the words of a mattress supplier who, seeing him return some time later with a new order, asked in astonishment: “Are you still open? And is business going well? Forgive my question, but with a lifetime of experience in trade, I would have sworn your business wouldn’t last long. I even told my wife, after her first visit to my company, that a madman had come in wanting to open a hotel practically in the countryside, and that he would surely fail.” He then added, “I thought I had a good instinct for business—but evidently I was mistaken.”

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From that moment on, the entire family, happy with our new life in Rome, devoted itself with enthusiasm to the new venture. My father, my mother, and above all my grandmother—still very young at the time—put all their previous experience in the field to use to ensure that our guests’ stay would be as pleasant as possible, with a warm welcome and the utmost availability of our staff.

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Over the years, the hotel was expanded, renovated and refurbished several times. Today, my sister and I, with the support of our mother, continue to run it, always guided by the values, inspiration and enthusiasm that our family has passed down to us after nearly one hundred years of experience in hospitality.