Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / Italy / Prati / The First Musica
The First Musica
Prati, Italy · Independent · Accessible Luxury
Rome almost never puts hotels on the river, which is half the point of The First Musica: 24 rooms on the Prati bank of the Tiber, each named for a composer or a performer, each behind floor-to-ceiling glass over the water. Studio Marincola rebuilt a 1964 office block by Mario Docci and wrapped it in brass-toned mesh and concrete that answers Richard Meier's Ara Pacis museum across the river. Alto takes the top three floors, and there is a pool under the street.
- 24 rooms
- Opened 2022
- Neighborhood: Prati / Lungotevere dei Mellini
- Architect: Mario Docci
- Interiors: Studio Marincola
About The First Musica
- The hotel completes The First Roma, a trio run as one scattered resort, so guests can book dinner at The First Arte's Acquolina, where Daniele Lippi holds a Michelin star.
- Oliva sits on the fifth floor under aerial windows that turn it into a winter garden, while Alto spreads across the sixth and seventh with an open-air rooftop over the Tiber.
- Rooms are finished in Loro Piana fabric and Calacatta marble, each with a Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance speaker, which suits a house built around music.
- The Pavilions claims about three staff for every guest here, roughly three times the ratio it attributes to other luxury hotels.
History
The building at Lungotevere dei Mellini 27 went up in 1964 as an office complex designed by the architect Mario Docci. Studio Marincola, the practice behind The First Arte and The First Dolce, took it apart and rebuilt it in glass, concrete, steel and brass, framing oversized windows in a mesh and concrete facade whose natural brass tones were chosen to answer Richard Meier's Museo dell'Ara Pacis on the opposite bank of the Tiber. It opened on 1 July 2022 as The Pavilions Rome, The First Musica.
That opening completed The First Roma, three hotels operated as a single deconstructed urban resort: The First Arte for visual art, The First Dolce for pastry, and The First Musica for music. Each of the 24 rooms and suites is dedicated to a composer or a performer, with floor-to-ceiling windows over the river, dark boiserie, Loro Piana fabrics, Calacatta marble, brass fittings, large-format contemporary artworks and a Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance speaker. Dining stacks upward: Oliva on the fifth floor, under aerial windows that make a winter garden of it, opened under chef Fabio Pecelli, and Alto occupies the sixth and seventh floors with an open-air rooftop directly over the Tiber. A spa below street level, added in September 2022, holds an indoor pool and two treatment rooms shared with guests of the other two hotels.
The setting
Lungotevere dei Mellini runs along the right bank of the Tiber in Prati, the orderly late-nineteenth-century quarter laid out between the river and the Vatican, and a district that Roman hoteliers have largely left alone. Riverside hotels are rare in the city, so the position is the point: the water is immediately outside, with Richard Meier's Ara Pacis pavilion and the Mausoleum of Augustus across the bridge. Piazza del Popolo is about nine minutes on foot, the Spanish Steps and Castel Sant'Angelo about twelve, and St Peter's Basilica roughly fifteen. Prati itself is where Romans shop and eat rather than where tour groups collect.
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