It has taken Bulgari Hotels & Resorts, part of Marriott International, nearly 20 years to make its mark on Rome, the luxury brand’s hometown. Debuting in 2023 in the shadow of the Mausoleum of Augustus—not far from Via Sistina, where Greek silversmith Sotirio Bulgari founded the first Bulgari jewelry shop in 1884—the property will be designed, like the rest of the portfolio, by Milan-based Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel.
Silvio Ursini, group executive vice president of Bulgari’s hotels and resorts division, heralds Citterio and Viel’s works as the “ultimate example of Italian craftsmanship.” Bulgari’s jewels are timeless, yet simultaneously exude a “contemporary attitude,” adds Ursini, and that ethos has also guided the hotels since 2004, when the first one opened in Milan. London, Dubai, Bali, Shanghai, Beijing, and most recently Paris, followed, flaunting Citterio and Viel’s embrace of materials including marble, silk, and eucalyptus to evoke “our opulent jeweler roots,” as Ursini puts it.
Ursini, who was raised in Naples, Italy, and Switzerland, worked in advertising and at Procter & Gamble before joining Bulgari back in 1989 as group marketing director. At the time, there were only 10 stores, and Ursini recalls “uniformed butlers with white gloves serving us lunch because we were so few. It was a very rarified atmosphere.”
Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel, which handles the design of the Bulgari portfolio, is behind the Bulgari Hotel London’s vitality pool, finished in gold leaf glass
Several years later, Ursini was named Bulgari’s creative director, leading global development and product diversification into such realms as fragrances and homewares. Although Bulgari toyed with venturing into fashion, the prospect was quickly abandoned because “it would have been a betrayal of our origins,” Ursini says. Instead, the company satisfied its desire for thoughtful growth by launching a complementary collection of hotels (“a jewel is made around a precious stone; a hotel is made around a precious location,” Ursini explains) that will expand at a faster clip over the next three years. Along with the Rome flagship, other outposts are slated for Tokyo, Miami, Los Angeles, and Raa Atoll in the Maldives, joining recently opened locations in Paris and London.
“The whole idea from the very beginning was not to treat it as a business because if it were a business, we would have 100 hotels by now,” explains Ursini. “It was, and still is, a focused exercise in creativity and innovation, an experimental adventure.”
Rather than conventional guestrooms, Bulgari accommodations are reminiscent of swank apartments outfitted with residential furniture like an “amazingly comfortable, heavy” Maxalto leather armchair, says Ursini. “We have translated the jeweler soul into hotels with an obsessive attention to detail. It’s not about gold and glitz.”
This article originally appeared in HD’s August 2022 issue.
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