Inspiration: discover the Blog

Rome does not give itself away easily. Millions visit every year, yet most leave having seen its surface — the Colosseum from a distance, the Vatican in a queue, the Forum through a crowd. To experience the city as it truly is — layered, intimate, inexhaustible — requires a different kind of access.

Rome does not simply offer luxury — it embodies it. Few cities in the world can rival the experience of waking up steps from a Baroque fountain, dining under frescoed ceilings, or being welcomed by a concierge who treats your preferences as sacred. For discerning travellers who expect nothing less than the finest, Rome's selection of five-star properties is both extraordinary and deeply layered.

Two Umbrian cities sixty kilometres apart offer, between them, the complete range of what this region does best: sacred art of the first order, one of Europe's great performing arts festivals, extraordinary food and a landscape of sustained beauty.

From the autostrada below, Orvieto appears hallucinatory: a medieval city perched on a sheer plug of volcanic tuff three hundred metres above the plain, its skyline dominated by a cathedral facade that may be the most beautiful in Italy. We design the visit that does the reality justice.

Umbria's capital sits on its ridge with the assurance of a city that has been governing itself and eating well for three thousand years. Lake Trasimeno, twenty minutes west, adds to the experience the quality most conspicuously absent from the more celebrated parts of the region: genuine peace.

Rome has been overwhelming visitors for three thousand years. The difference between being overwhelmed and being transformed is the quality of the preparation and the access. We provide both.

Private Mass at St Peter's and the Eternal City in lights — Rome in the most ceremonial week of its year, for the traveller who wants to attend it properly. There is a particular hour on the morning of the twenty-fifth of December in St Peter's Basilica — somewhere between half-past nine and ten, when the Pope's Midnight Mass of the previous night has been concluded for some hours and the morning's papal Mass has not yet begun — when the great basilica is at its most still. T

The season of private visits and long, perfect lunches — Rome in October, when the city's most demanding visitors come to take it slowly. There is a particular October Saturday in Rome — somewhere in the second or third week, when the high summer has fully departed and the chill of late autumn has not yet arrived — that the experienced visitor recognises immediately as the Rome the city is, in its better self. The light is amber. The pines stand black against pale skies. The

Norcia, Assisi and the beating heart of Italy — the case for Umbria in November, when the region is at its quietest and its most authentically itself. There is a moment in early November in the upper Valnerina, the high valley that runs eastward from Norcia toward the Sibillini, when the chestnut forests above the town turn the particular bronze that the late Italian autumn produces and the smoke from the wood fires of the small villages drifts low across the valley floor. Th

The most remarkable hour we know how to arrange in Rome — and what is involved in conducting it properly. There is no experience in our practice that we recommend more frequently, more confidently, or with more general approval from clients afterwards than the after-hours private opening of the Vatican Museums. It is, for most of the people who experience it, the highest single hour of any Italian journey. It is also a fairly specific arrangement that requires considerable ad

Private Vatican access, papal audiences, and the Eternal City's finest suites — for the traveller who wants to attend Rome in its most ceremonial week. The first thing the Roman calendar does each year is lean in toward Easter. From the moment Carnival ends and Lent begins, the city is in a slow, accumulating preparation for the week that, more than any other, is what the calendar of Rome was built around. The Vatican publishes its Holy Week schedule. The pilgrims begin to ar