Six Senses Rome occupies Palazzo Salviati Cesi Mellini on Piazza di San Marcello, off Via del Corso, sharing a wall with the church of San Marcello al Corso. Listings and guidebooks routinely call it a 15th-century palace, and that is wrong: it stands on the site of Cardinal Giovanni Michiel's house of the late 1480s, but the building itself went up in the 18th century under Tomaso De Marchis for Cardinal Mario Mellini, and the Salviati, Cesi and Mellini cardinals give it its name. Orion Capital Managers funded the conversion; Starching, working with Paolo Micalizzi under the heritage superintendency, ran the restoration and the architecture, and Patricia Urquiola's studio did the interiors. The protected façade, the monumental marble staircase under its skylight and the 600-year-old columns in the hall were restored rather than reworked. It opened on 16 March 2023 as the brand's first Italian hotel. Gruppo Statuto bought the building that October for EUR 245 million, and Six Senses, part of IHG Hotels and Resorts, still operates it under the same name. A fourth-century baptismal bath sits under glass on the ground floor.
There are 96 rooms and suites in ten categories, and the entry rooms are city rooms rather than palace rooms: a Deluxe is 34 square metres, a Superior Deluxe 36, a Junior Suite 47. Then the sizes jump, to the Corner Suite at 77, which looks onto the square and the church, and the two-bedroom Lata Suite at 222, of which 96 is terrace. Walls are travertine and cocciopesto, the Roman plaster of crushed brick and lime. The courtyard is the quiet side, but only the Deluxe, Superior Deluxe, Deluxe Suite and the three largest suites are sold as courtyard or city; the Junior Suites and the Corner Suite face the city only. The ground floor is one open social floor, lobby into restaurant into planted courtyard.
The spa is the case for the place, and it is new work rather than antiquity. The hotel calls it a modern-day take on the ancient ritual: three plunge pools reproduce a caldarium, tepidarium and frigidarium, with walls and portals lined in Travertino Romano Classico, laurel leaves cut into the travertine in bas-relief, and a Palladiana floor set with green Cipollino marble. It runs 9am to 8pm, and entry is included in the room rate for guests of 16 and over; the EUR 85 for 75 minutes on the spa menu is the day-visitor price, and any treatment adds an hour in the baths beforehand. Around it are five treatment rooms, a hammam, a sauna, a biohacking room, an aerial yoga studio, an Alchemy Bar and a gym that never closes. Downstairs, BIVIUM runs all day from 7am with an open kitchen, a Josper grill and a wood-fired oven; NOTOS, on the roof from April to November, is where Fabio Sangiovanni cooks. The MICHELIN Guide's hotel selection listed it with one Key in September 2026.
Take it if a bathhouse is a reason to travel and you want the Trevi Fountain five minutes from the door. All ten categories were live and bookable on the hotel's own engine for January 2027, at about EUR 1,310 a night for a Deluxe with breakfast and tax. Ratings split hard: 9.6 out of 10 from 88 reviews on Expedia against 4.0 out of 5 from 122 on Tripadvisor, where 26 sit at poor or terrible, and the recurring complaint is value rather than any single failure. The restaurant, bar and spa all take non-residents, so the ground floor can read as a public room at weekends. There is no swimming pool, and the roof shuts for winter, which leaves one restaurant from December to March. City tax adds EUR 10 per person per night and valet parking EUR 65.
