Orient Express has chosen Rome as the first destination for its collection of hotels. Set for completion by the end of 2023, the property will be located at the Piazza de la Minerva in the city’s historic Pantheon district.

The brand chose the ancient 17^th century palace – situated next to the only Gothic style church in the Eternal City and home to Michaelangelo’s Christ, just across from an Egyptian obelisk by sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini – as a means of celebrating the rich heritage and signature art of living of the iconic Orient Express.

The palace was built in 1620 by order of the Fonseca, a rich aristocratic family from the Kingdom of Portugal, who became established in Rome in the 1500s. It opened as a hotel in the early 19th century, before taking the name of Grand Hotel de la Minerva in 1832. Behind its 17th-century façade, the building has a lobby decorated with Roman columns and sculptures by Rinaldo Rinaldi, a disciple of Canova, plus a panoramic terrace where guests can admire the dome of the Pantheon or the Sant’Ivo and the roof of the Quirinal.

In years gone by, travellers would use the hotel as a stopover on “Grand Tour”, which took aristocratic youth all around Europe, as well as art lovers and globetrotters like Herman Melville. French writer Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his pen name Stendhal, also frequented the property and found inspiration to write his Promenades in Rome, while novelist George Sand took a long trip there in 1855, and Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard created Murau – the character of his novel, The Extinction – within its walls too.

“For the past 150 years, Orient Express has been sublimating the art of travel with its luxury trains, its unique experiences and its collections of rare objects,” says Vice President Guillaume de Saint Lager. “Today, a new era is beginning, the launch of a collection of hotels that are unique in the world in one of the most romantic capitals of Europe. It is the perfect place to write the next chapters of the Orient Express story.”