Though it might sound strange to compare a hotel group to Julius Caesar, it’s quite apt for the Rome-based Shedir Collection. After all, it has been conquering the city with a breakneck pace of openings over the last few years. By the end of the year, the group will have opened five hotels since 2018 (four of those properties came online just in the last three years).
So how do you become one of the hottest and fastest-growing hotel groups in the Eternal City, a notoriously difficult place to build in because of some of the strictest building codes on the planet? To start, it helps to have practice.
This isn’t Shedir Collection’s first rodeo. The hospitality company, which is owned by real estate magnate Eduardo Safdie, has already brought its brand of relaxed elegance to other parts of Italy—most notably the Capri Tiberio Palace, where Jennifer Lopez vacationed this summer and which Tom Marchant, cofounder of the luxury tour operator Black Tomato, described as having “soulful intimacy that will leave even the most jaded traveler speechless.” (Safdie also has ownership stakes in the J.K. Place Rome and J.K. Place Capri, where booking a year in advance is often required to secure one of the coveted rooms.)
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The group’s formula in Rome has been this: Build something in a beautifully restored space (many of them former palazzos), with buzzy restaurants and bars as the centerpieces of the hotel; layer on very personalized service; and pay meticulous attention to all the aesthetic details, including filling the walls with Safdie’s vast collection of blue chip artwork.
“Our aim in Rome is to offer four different hospitality experiences: intimacy at Vilòn, fun at Maalot, art and design at Umiltà 36, and history at Palazzo Roma,” Claudio Ceccherelli, the CEO of Shedir Collection who held general manager positions at Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme and Villa d’Este Como, tells BAZAAR.com.
The Rome market is proving to be a hot spot for luxury hotels. While the city might be playing catch-up with Milan in terms of five-star hotels, Six Senses, Bulgari, and the EDITION are all slated to open Rome outposts this year.
But Shedir Collection had a head start with its niche of upscale boutique properties. It helped, of course, to already have the real estate on hand. Safdie owned a quartet of prestigious buildings in the heart of Rome. “That gave me the opportunity to diversify the offering and the guest experience. We chose four different designers in order to emphasize the difference of each property. I firmly believe that in an exclusive hotel, the art is an important factor to the guest experience,” Safdie writes in an email to BAZAAR.
At the Maalot, located on a lively pedestrian street steps from the Trevi Fountain, the restaurant, Don Pasquale (the name is an homage to composer Gaetano Donizetti, who lived there in the 19th century), could easily be mistaken for an art gallery. Hanging on the walls are numerous works by Argentine artist Stanley Gonczanski—many of the paintings look like great masterpieces from previous centuries but are actually humorous takes on serious portraits. Think: Marie Antoinette eating ice cream.
Along with the art, Shedir Collection is united by its scale—none of the properties has more than 50 rooms—and the hands-on service that gives guests the feeling they are being hosted by friends, albeit ones who know everything about Rome and have connections in all the right places. Want the Bottega or Fendi bag of the season but can’t seem to find it? Annabella Cariello, head of the savvy staff at Hotel Vilòn, the 18-key hotel located in a historic mansion on a small street just paces from the Spanish Steps, will arrange a VIP shopping trip to help you snatch it.
Known for being extremely discreet—good luck even trying to find the sign—the Vilòn is where Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan stayed when they attended a wedding in Rome in 2019, opting for the then $1,500-a-night Borghese Suite. It’s the kind of hotel that was built for the Instagram hashtag “if you know you know” (#IYKYK). The interiors were done by Giampiero Panepinto, a Milan-based designer whose decor feels like it was sourced from both European flea markets and the coolest Art Deco stores in Miami.
“Shedir Collection really feels like a breath of fresh air while still delivering a style and elegance befitting the glamor and sophistication of places like Capri and Rome,” Marchant says. “The hotels feel intimate but luxurious, giving it a real home-away-from-home vibe.”
As part of Shedir Collection’s ever-expanding real estate portfolio, the Vilòn, which opened in 2018, recently got an annex called Vilòn a Palazzo that has four suites, one of which overlooks the Borghese Gardens.
Sometime during the first quarter of 2023, Shedir Collection will unveil Palazzo Roma, a 39-room hotel with 19 junior suites located on Via del Corso near the Parliament and Piazza Colonna, which will be the grand dame of the collection. “It [Palazzo Roma] will emulate what it feels like to be hosted by a Roman aristocrat. It will be like an undisclosed museum, with original frescoes and coffered ceilings,” Ceccherelli says. (The property has 16-foot ceilings, bathroom floors made from some of the most precious and rare marble in the world, and a private courtyard garden with an original 17th-century fountain.)
To be sure, Shedir Collection hasn’t made its rapid expansion easy. Restoring centuries-old palazzos and mansions in an ancient city is often painstaking, time-consuming, and a highly bureaucratic process. For instance, work had to be paused at the Palazzo Roma when they found a new fresco on the ceiling of the restaurant so it could be examined by art preservation specialists. Other times, Ceccherelli says, it’s tracking down paint colors to match those that were used centuries ago.
None of that, however, is a deterrent to continue expanding the empire. In fact, Shedir Collection has plans to bring its signature style of hotels to Milan and Venice.
