Piazza Augusto Imperatore is a 1930s invention. Demolition around the Mausoleum of Augustus began in 1934, and three rationalist blocks by Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo framed the exposed tomb. The one at number 10 was built between 1936 and 1938 and opened in 1950 as the headquarters of INPS, the Italian social security institute. Bvlgari, which has sold jewellery at 10 Via Condotti since 1905, took all 14,000 square metres of it, seven floors, and handed the conversion to ACPV Architects Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel. It opened on 9 June 2023, the ninth Bvlgari hotel and the first in the company's home city. Bvlgari licenses the name and controls the design; Marriott International manages the hotel and runs its booking system. Francesco Cellini's pedestrian rebuild of the square outside followed in June 2025.
There are 106 rooms and suites, fewer than the 114 the opening press release advertised and the 110 Michelin and Expedia still list. Nineteen Superior Rooms at 33 square metres are the entry, then 26 Deluxe at 37, 14 Premium at 49, 30 Junior Suites at 51, 2 Superior Suites at 58, 12 Deluxe Suites at 81, 2 Premium Suites at 133 and, on the third floor, the 300 square metre Bvlgari Suite, which faces the Mausoleum through ten windows. Those eight published counts add to exactly 106. Most categories come in one of four colour palettes, with coloured marble bathrooms and mosaic roundels set into the walls. The circular entrance vestibule holds a colossal bust of Jupiter Serapis lent by the Torlonia collection; the ground-floor library, shelved in Franco Albini's 1956 Cassina bookcases, holds books about Rome.
The spa is 1,500 square metres, open 7am to 9pm, with eight treatment rooms, a green onyx bath in the spa suite and Augustinus Bader treatments. Its centrepiece is the natatio: a 20 metre indoor pool tiled by Bisazza in mosaic taken from the Baths of Caracalla, eight columns clad in ribbed arabescato marble rising out of the water, two bronze spouts cast by the lost-wax method. Il Ristorante - Niko Romito has 54 covers on the fifth floor with a terrace over the Mausoleum; it is in the Michelin guide, holds no star and serves dinner only from Monday to Saturday. Il Caffè takes the ground floor and the arcade outside, running 7am to midnight with breakfast all day and afternoon tea from 3pm. The Bvlgari Bar seats 108 inside and 108 out behind a black marble counter finished with 110 gold-dusted Murano twirls, and La Terrazza on the roof, 76 seats among 11 pergolas, serves the same list from 6pm to midnight.
It suits anyone who wants a very new hotel in a very old city and who will actually use the pool and the spa. It is not a Roman palazzo and does not pretend to be; the pleasure is precision and marble rather than patina. The reservation is money. January and February open near 2,000 euros a night for the 33 square metre entry room, and May and August pass 2,700. Tripadvisor rates the rooms 5.0 and value 4.1, and nearly every poor review comes from a visitor to the bar, the terrace or afternoon tea rather than a guest. The stayers who do complain describe service that is efficient without warmth.
