It was 1960 when Francesca Vaccari and her daughter Marialina decided to open a hotel in Rome’s elegant, residential Trieste district. They bought a building constructed in 1938, intending to turn it into a modern, refined hotel in an area full of embassies and representative offices, right opposite Villa Torlonia and close to the city’s historic centre.

We are not a historically important hotel, but we are a hotel with a story: our grandparents, after opening and running a hotel and restaurant near Via Cavour from 1920 to 1960, decided to move to this elegant neighbourhood and open the first hotel in the area.

Towards the end of the 1950s, Francesca and Marialina finally found the building they had been looking for: it had belonged to the Canadian Monks and, before the war, had been the studio of a German painter. They entrusted the architect Benni with renewing its style, giving the building a more modern look in keeping with the trends of the time. The hotel soon became a point of reference for the companies, embassies and welfare institutions of the area.

Vintage black-and-white postcard: the three-storey building that would become the Hotel Fenix, seen from the rain-soaked street
The building in 1958, before it became the Hotel Fenix

In 1972 the hotel was extended with the construction of a second wing, designed by the architect Lorenzo Monardo, one of the first in Rome to design a building with an exposed reinforced-concrete structure. During the works, several paintings depicting allegorical scenes were discovered, probably by the same German painter: today they hang in the hotel’s common rooms and lounges.

Vintage black-and-white photo: the entrance with the “hotel fenix” sign and, behind it, the new concrete wing
The hotel entrance in the 1970s, with the new wing in the background
Vintage black-and-white photo: the façade of the second wing seen from below, with its rows of concrete balconies
The exposed reinforced-concrete balconies of the second wing
Vintage black-and-white photo: the hotel's second wing among the garden trees
The second wing seen from the garden
Vintage colour photo: the lobby with purple chairs, a marble table with a vase of dried flowers and a large allegorical painting on the wall
The lobby in the 1970s: on the wall, one of the paintings discovered during the works

Since 1960 the hotel has been run by the same family, following a tradition in which the women of the Vaccari family have always taken the lead. On 6 April 2020 the Hotel Fenix celebrated its 60th anniversary. Today the granddaughters run the hotel. Hotel Fenix Roma is a story written by women, expressed in attention to detail, in small thoughtful touches and in the welcome we reserve for our guests.