Orient Express La Minerva

Orient Express La Minerva is a luxury hotel in Rome on Piazza della Minerva, steps from the Pantheon, inside the 17th-century Palazzo Fonseca — a building that housed Stendhal, George Sand, and Herman Melville during the age of the Grand Tour. Opened in April 2025 as the Orient Express brand's first hotel in the world, the restoration was handed entirely to Franco-Mexican architect and painter Hugo Toro, who designed everything from the custom carpets to the door handles. The 93 rooms and suites are wrapped in earthy mineral tones, Art Deco chrome, Rosso di Verona stone bathrooms, and bespoke headboards hand-painted by Toro himself. The spa, designed by Toro and opened in 2026, reinterprets the ancient Roman thermal sequence — tepidarium, calidarium, frigidarium — alongside a marble hammam with hand-blown Murano glass fixtures and treatments using Furtuna Skin, sourced from an 800-acre organic estate in Sicily. Gigi Roma rooftop restaurant sits seven floors above the piazza with open views across the city. The Pantheon is a two-minute walk.