Away Nights

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Rome Cavalieri Hilton

Rome Cavalieri Hilton is situated in a lush 15-acre private park just above the Vatican, with stunning panoramic views over the historic Eternal City

By: Mary Gostelow

After spending an Away-Night at the Cavalieri Hilton, Rome I keep on thinking of the Million Dollar Wedding I will go for next time round.

It includes private jet arrival, the entire planned wedding, a dress rumored to come from Valentino's personal inspiration, personalized Frette linens to take home and food from Heinz Beck, who heads the Michelin three-star La Pergola restaurant on the roof of the amazing hilltop Cavalieri Hilton, Rome. For this visit, however, I make do with a limo from the airport. When we reach the 15-acre estate, we glide into a circular drive, skirting around a 360-degree fountain like a giant seed pod, with three life-size bronze dolphins in front. An antique mottled brown marble trough, set at equinine height, is a reminder of the hotel's name (it was designed in 1963 by The Vatican's favorite, Sr Nerui). From ground level, the S-shaped hotel soars up nine floors above ground (and later I discover it goes down two floors, too). All the 370 rooms and suites have balconies, from which hang living greenery.

I go past a stone bust of St Peter into a shimmering, gleaming marble palace that appears mainly to be the viewing room for a trio of the best examples of 1780s Rococo art by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo that the hotel's anonymous - but rich - owner bought at Sotheby's, Milan, last year (it is rumored he got them for euro eight million to prevent their leaving Italy, though their total worth is said to be euro 26 million). Eight feet tall, with the center 17 feet wide, they hang on the wall to your one o'clock, as you enter the hotel looking forward: protected by glass, and there are plump ruby-red upholstered chairs and sofas in front so that you can have Tea With Tiepolo. I am told there is about euro 60 million of art displayed throughout this place, by the way, and an MP3 self-guided audio tour is being planned. It is somehow not overpowering, and I do find the discreet front desk, elegantly 18th century antique, as is the VIP check-in (for our Million Dollar bride and others) in an adjacent alcove. It is like checking in as a high-roller at such luxury gaming resorts as Bellagio or Wynn, both in Las Vegas, both of whom also pride themselves on their art collections but boy, this is the Metropolitan Museum of Art compared to Las Vegas city art gallery, if there is one.

I am escorted past a glass case of a Cascella uber-luxury fashion boutique (Gucci has also moved in here recently) to a room key-activated VIP elevator, its interior gilding and wood as polished as the dashboard of a Rolls. Out, at the eighth floor, we pass three framed bolero-type jackets worn by Nureyev in named ballets (how do maestros leap around wearing so much padding on their upper bodies?). The corridor has beige and royal blue carpeting, lemon yellow ragged walls, white sculpted arches. Suite 867, the Penthouse Suite, is one of two near-identical 2,100 sq ft corner suites decorated by local designer Gigi Marrocco in 2003. This one gets the morning sun (the sibling Imperial Suite, nearer the Vatican, is better for evening light). I have an L-shaped living room which flows to a city-facing bedroom: all this area has cream carpeting with an inner brown and beige cord border that flows around a curved staircase - more anon - and lemon Venetian-ragged walls. The corniced ceiling matches the curves of the carpet rims below. There is a six-seat caramel velvet sofa, with five-foot back, and matching mega-chairs, all Karl Lagerfield and bought at auction (did they come from the hotel he opened in the Berlin suburbs, the one that was briefly the bijou luxury boutique Ritz-Carlton?). The library corner is heavy with gold-embossed Italian hardbacks, Sotheby's catalogs and, for English readers, a range of Giunti classics paperbacks (Lewis Carroll, Jerome K Jerome, Shakespeare), and The Economist's China's Stockmarket guide, 2003.

There are Philips plasma screens, in parlor, bedroom and bathroom. I find Breaker binoculars - oh yes, and four real authentic Andy Warhols. Four are two-foot high dollar signs, framed in the bedroom. The other is a Marilyn, in the bathroom behind the bedhead, which itself continues up into a six foot-wide window looking into the main bathing area, raised up three polished steps from the bathroom proper. The bathing area also has a six-foot circular spa tub, a ceiling studied with fibre optic pinlights, and Zen toiletries.

So back down to the main bathroom, which has multi-facetted Swarovvski crystal taps at the one oval sink. The central part of its marble floor is, like a super-yacht, clad in polished timber, with blue lights at the corners of the wood, and then a malachite inset border into the marble around - and malachite winds its way around the bathroom shelves too. There is a plethora of upholstered furniture, a Technogym static bicycle, cream robes to match the cream towels, a wall-set heated towel rack. The marble shower room has rainforest, wave and hand-head shower nozzles, and chromo-aromatherapy lights. The L-shaped toilet stall has toilet in one arm of its shape, the bidet in the other. There are menus for towels and soap, and pillows (ten, including buckwheat husk, kapok flakes, white horse hair for free air flow, shredded coconut to evoke dreams of the South Pacific and herbal, with an aroma of freshly-cut grass).

The main part of the bathroom has a ten-foot wide bed, with cream self-striped linens. The entire ceiling is studded with thousands of these fibre-optic pinpricks (how do I turn them off?) I have a cream leather massage chair - can this get much better? Yes it can. First, back in the main salon, a marble shelf with carved supports that should surely hold the mausoleum of some ancient pope is in fact my desk, with all necessary sockets on the wall above. Immediately to my

left, as I sit now, is the lowest, J-shaped, of the 21 wood-edged, carpetted steps that leads up to my private rooftop, same area as the whole of my 'apartment'. Up there, on the wooden deck, are surely the best views of Rome, plus two pairs of lounging chairs, an outside shower and a six-foot circular jacuzzi. This whole upper area, by the way, can be closed off by an electrically-operated horizontal glass door (bullet-poof, naturally) that slides over the entire stairwell. The door is operated by a push button below and could, one suspect, strand an unwanted lover up there for eternity, or a rescuer, whichever came first: there is a handy monitor for watching what goes on up there, via CCTV.

All this investigating was making my clocks, both antique freestanding analog and digital on the DVD player, race so fast that time was running out. The outdoor Olympic-sized pool closes at seven pm so I swam, wearing the obligatory provided hat, in the inside pool, a good 50 feet, marble around, next to a real fireplace that works all winter. One end is conservatory, looking into the garden. There is a La Prairie spa for my next visit, and a well-lit gym, but I dashed back up to my little pad to put on the Christian Louboutins for dinner outside on Il Giardino dell'Uliveto terrace. As we sat under palest beige sun umbrellas we looked across the pool to an illuminated arbor where a Ghananian crooner Jaffa - dressed for some reason like a whirling dervish - delightfully entertains with piano and song. Our wood table was set with rectangular cream linen mats edged in typical Italian pulled-thread work and white Thomas china and Arthur Krupp cutlery - both from Germany - and little nightlights. An immaculate waiter who looked like a male model playing a server, in must-be-designer gear with an orange tie, brought a metal basket of hot crisp bread and fresh bread rolls. Chef Attilio Barberi's menu is simple luxury, the real thing, like typical dishes, pastas, grills. His caprese is a whole Buffalo mozzarella on tomato purée on which float four basil leaves (euro 24). His grilled Italian veal loin is a giant T-bone - on to which an orange tie lovingly drizzles a Sicilian olive oil: it is surrounded by thin grilled vegetables, all bearing that welcoming sear mark, and there is a zigzag topped half of lemon on a lettuce leaf, nothing more, no sauce, simple perfection (euro 34). They know their food, these Italians. Mama's food may be best but apparently the servers here, and the entire 400-strong employee complement, have five dedicated cooks for their own staff restaurant, on a par with where I am dining - though they, presumably, do not wash it down with Montacilno from Banffi

Back in my room, the bed has been turned down, with tomorrow's weather (sunny) and chocolates (gold box) and the room service menu, which is so elaborate, with an art cover that at least euro 10 has gone into its production. Anyway, I can get anything from continental, euro 35, up to Imperial, which includes Pommery and a truffle omelette and marinated swordfish, euro 150 for two. I wonder when they, the mythical theys who run such imaginative luxury hotels as this, will add a Gladiator breakfast, for you can, regardless of age, learn to be a gladiator here, a brag-later achievement that is understandably popular with City types.

You can also, by prior arrangement, run early morning with the General Manager, Marcus-Milan Arandelovic, generally merely called Mr Milan. He happens to be a marathoner, but anyway I had forgotten to order him ahead so as dawn broke I ran down, and back up, the hill the hotel tops, and showered in my kaleidoscope shower, and went down to the seventh floor Club Lounge for breakfast. Here was another grand arrival, namely past the Nureyevs and down 21 imposing curved marble steps - past a giant early 18th century Gobelin tapestry. The 2,670 sq ft Lounge is a painting of ochre carpets, rich damasks and velvet, with lots of more Nureyev boleros framed around the wall (wow that man must have had more dancing jackets that Imelda had shoes). Add a few more overseas green potplants and this surely was what Dame Edith Sitwell's boudoir must have been. The china here is green and gold-edged Villeroy & Boch, the freshest juice comes from carafes with necks as long as a heron's, and the butter is so fresh I could hardly bear to put any bread under it.

Oh golly, back to food. As it happened I met up with Heinz Beck, the brilliant German behind, and within, the three-star Michelin La Pergola (closed on Mondays, when I was staying). What is new, I asked this art-lover and creator who had actually moved on from 'foam' before Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal, and then every Tom, Dick and Harry, got in on the act? Well, right now he is making 'snow' of bacalhau, dried cod, but in the main he thinks that food will move on, to genuine simplicity.

Next time at Cavalieri Hilton it will to taste that snow, white as the wedding dress for that Million Dollar package... www.cavalieri-hilton.it

Rome Cavalieri, The Waldorf Astoria Collection, Rome, Italy
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