Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / Italy / Rome / Donna Camilla Savelli
Donna Camilla Savelli
Rome, Italy · VRetreats · Accessible Luxury
A duchess built this place to get away from the world. Camilla Virginia Savelli hired Francesco Borromini in 1642 to raise the convent of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori on the Janiculum slope, then moved into the ground floor as a widow and died there in 1668. It has been a hotel since 2007, and the bones are all still here: the working chapel, the cloister, the checkerboard corridors, a courtyard garden of magnolias and citrus around a fountain. Many of the 94 rooms began as nuns' cells. The rooftop terrace hands you Trastevere at dusk.
- 94 rooms
- Opened 2007
- Neighborhood: Trastevere / Gianicolo
- Architect: Francesco Borromini
About Donna Camilla Savelli
- Camilla Virginia Savelli, Duchess of Latera, bought the land in 1641 and commissioned Francesco Borromini, the architect of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, to design her monastery. Building began in the spring of 1643.
- Widowed in 1662, the duchess moved into the ground floor of her own convent, spent her last years helping the poor of Trastevere, and was buried in its church in 1668.
- The chapel just inside the entrance is still in use and still watched over by nuns. The Premiere Suite's soaking tub sits beneath the rose window that looks into it.
- A 2025 renovation turned the old restaurant into Contempo, where Emidio Ferro cooks Roman classics, and the top suite opens onto a private terrace of 50 square metres.
History
Camilla Virginia Savelli, Duchess of Latera by marriage to Pietro Francesco Farnese, wanted a religious house of her own in Rome. From 1641 she began buying up a block on the lower slope of the Janiculum, starting with a farm, and she gave the commission to Francesco Borromini, then at the height of his powers. Work on the church and the nuns' wing of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori began in the spring of 1643. Borromini laid out the residential block to the letter of Carlo Borromeo's instructions for female monasteries, and money problems left parts of the complex unfinished for years.
The duchess buried her husband in the church in 1662, then put on widow's clothes, moved down to the ground floor, and lived among her oblates until her death in 1668, tending the poor of Trastevere. Her portrait still hangs in what is now reception, and she gave the hotel its name.
The building became a hotel in 2007. Guest rooms were carved out of the old cells, and the checkerboard corridors, vaulted lobby, cloister and courtyard garden survived the conversion. Donna Camilla Savelli now belongs to VRetreats, the heritage line of VOIhotels within Alpitour World. A renovation completed in 2025 reworked the 94 rooms and the public spaces, added a concave and convex bar counter as a wink at Borromini's geometry, and replaced the old restaurant with Contempo under chef Emidio Ferro.
The setting
Via Garibaldi climbs out of Trastevere towards the Janiculum, so the hotel has quiet uphill on one side and the loudest nightlife in Rome downhill on the other. Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere and Palazzo Corsini, home to part of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, are both minutes away, and the Botanical Garden backs onto the neighbourhood. Walk up instead and you reach the Janiculum terrace, the standard Roman sunset. The centro storico is about half an hour on foot across Ponte Sisto.
Amenities
- Tailor-made event creation on request
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