Director Luca Guadagnino Brings His Stunning Vision to a New Roman Hotel
studiolucaguadagnino breathes energy & life into a hotel fit for Guadagnino's vibrant cinematic universe of "Call Me By Your Name" and "Challengers"
Last month, everyone was talking about Queer, Luca Guadagnino’s new film starring Daniel Craig, as it made its debut at the Venice Film Festival.
Queer is (apparently) decisively sexual. Guadagnino’s films are often charged with eroticism; Call Me By Your Name had the peach and Challengers had a sultry & calculating Zendaya. But this new film, based on the William S. Burroughs book of the same name, brings it to the next level.
Craig plays an American expat in Mexico who spends much of his time shooting heroin and cruising. The New York Times reporting from the film festival conveyed some of the audience’s unease with how racy the film is: “During those scenes and the many explicit moments of gay intimacy that follow, the man sitting next to me groaned with displeasure and murmured, ‘Oh, God.’ Then, when the end credits rolled, he booed as angrily as a ticked-off French critic at Cannes.”
I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop talking about another Guadagnino endeavor: Palazzo Talìa, the newly opened hotel in Rome designed by the Italian director.
The hotel isn’t as sexy as it is sensual. It is bold and beautiful. It blends the building’s history with contemporary flair. And it has the colors and the textures you’d expect from a from a Luca Guadagnino film, now brought to life.
The building that now houses Palazzo Talìa was built in the 1500s. It was first home to Angelo Maria Colocci, secretary to Pope Leo X de’ Medici. After his death, it was turned into Collegio Nazareno - a school for underprivileged boys in Rome. But over the centuries the school took a more bourgeoisie turn and educated European aristocrats including future politicians, cardinals and diplomats. The school closed in 1999 but there are still lingering elements of politics here; it houses the seat of the Partito Democratico, the social-democratic political party in Italy. But the Collegio Nazareno is now primarily the Palazzo Talìa, a 26-room boutique hotel that opened in May.
The history of the building is evident as soon as you walk through the doors. Because much of the building is a landmark, many of the frescoes throughout had to be maintained and protected. As studolucaguadagnino project leader Pablo Molezún told
for Architectural Digest, “We did a deep study of the original colors and implemented them into contemporary handmade carpets with new graphic patterns.”The colors are what immediately jumps out at you when you visit the hotel. You first have to make your way through the lobby with its opulent Murano chandelier and color-popping geometric carpets. Then it’s down a long hallway with a double-sided green couch peppered with newspaper and other readings. Guadagnino was tasked with designing all the public-facing areas of the hotel, his first foray into the hospitality-design realm. And his design studio’s pillars of chromatism, geometry, and craftsmanship are on full display here.
But there is no better example of the deep color study than in Il Bar della Musa, the hotel bar tucked away at the end of the Palazzo.
The bar perfectly blends the new and the old, as does the rest of the hotel. Above the double-height ceilings are beautiful frescoes of grotesques. But are these paintings drab? Have the colors dulled over the centuries? Have the paintings lost its luster?
Perhaps, but they are entirely reinvigorated by the contemporary design touches. The walls around the bar are tiled with hammered-mirror rectangles. At the center of each of these tile joints is a different colored knob, a rainbow of nodes reflecting the colors used in the frescoes above. That same color palette forms groovy ceramic columns that make up the base of the bar. Even the pieces that might be overlooked for their color are overcompensated with texture and richness; the tables in this bar are a glazed lava stone created by Sicilian artisans which echoes the mirrored tiles. The cocktails served in the bar are as lovely as the design; each is carefully crafted and named for the muses that are said to have lived in this neighborhood before the palazzo was built.
Guadagnino told the Financial Times that he prefers “intimate” instead of “exclusive” when designing. “The aesthetic is maximalist but with the rigour, let’s say, of minimalism. Because if you apply minimalism per se, you lose the thread of the pleasure.”
That pleasure continues outside of the bar. The railings on the staircases are wrapped in leather. The courtyard is flooded with uplit palm trees that makes it feel like you’re in a mediterranean oasis and not in the center of bustling Rome. A clocktower looms above. The furniture is comfortable and elegant, mostly cream-colored with seams that pop with red. Each vantage point is atmospheric and film-worthy.
There are few places in the world where you can curl up on a pastel bouclé couch underneath a bust of a pope or a politician who influenced the building in which you’re sitting. Every corner of Palazzo Talìa feels that special. After even just a few minutes in this hotel, you might think you’ve stepped into the scene of a beautiful film.
Oh the beauty of this hotel! To take a structure so old and to highlight the old and bring in touches so exquisite, bold and subtle. Thank you for showing and telling.