In Rome’s Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi, with its baroque Cupids and vaulted gold ceilings, the tour groups that gather for the Caravaggios are regularly shushed by an invisible priest. “Shhhh,” says a voice over the sound system. The lights flick off, someone drops a euro in the coin slot and, as the lights flick on, the murmuring continues.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Caravaggio, in Lombardy was his home town) painted three masterpieces devoted to St Matthew here — The Calling, The Inspiration and The Martyrdom (1599-1600). A shaft of sunlight that falls across The Calling, illuminating the faces of five men, has been painted to line up with the real spring sunshine that floods through a high window. It’s an absorbing painting, full of contrast and tension — and like much of Caravaggio’s work, its meaning is contested. Federica Dal Palu, my charming art historian guide for the day, is sure that St Matthew is the bearded older man. I like to think he is the young man who looks away, on whom the light and Christ’s finger seem to fall.
Separating the man and the myth is one of the many pleasures of seeing Rome through Caravaggio’s eyes. As his last great painting, The Martyrdom of St Ursula, arrives in the National Gallery in London, Federica’s two-hour walking tour is part of a package offered by Rome’s Hotel Eden — a lemony mansion that sits high above the Spanish Steps. At the nearby Galleria Borghese, you can see six Caravaggios including the Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Young Sick Bacchus (a self-portrait when the artist was, it is thought, ill with malaria) and David with the Head of Goliath (£11; galleriaborghese.beniculturali.it).
Caravaggio lived in Rome for the most eventful, chaotic years of his life, arriving as a 19-year-old and fleeing in 1606 after killing a man. He left more paintings here than anywhere else (26), but much of what we know comes from the extensive police records: a 3am sword fight here, an attack on a lawyer there.
For all his modern fame, it is possible to walk in the artist’s footsteps and encounter no crowds today. Just 150m north of the shushing priests, and a four-minute walk from Piazza Navona, Federica and I have Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto to ourselves at Chiesa di Sant’Agostino: a glowing portrait of Mary, barefoot and scandalously sensual, painted from one of the courtesans Caravaggio favoured as models. The artist lived nearby in the area known as Ortaccio (literally, “awful garden”), a 16th-century ghetto reserved for prostitutes, which today borders the central Sant’Eustachio and Campo Marzio districts. Sant’Agostino was the only church they were permitted to attend, as long as they sat in the front row and did not distract the congregation.
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What was once a slum is now crossed with roads carrying designer stores: turn a corner and you will see a queue for Louis Vuitton; turn another and you will see a quiet alley hung with Roman underpants. In one square 200 young men wait outside a shop with their phones held aloft. Is it a footballer? No, a local sandwich maker who has gone viral on TikTok.
It’s a blend of old and new, wealth and poverty that Caravaggio would have known too. His patron Cardinal Del Monte gave him a room in his palace (now the Italian Senate), but he preferred to paint in his lodgings at No 19 Vicolo del Divino Amore. We walk past both, and in the courtyard behind Caravaggio’s former home a man has set up an easel to paint copies. There is no museum here, just a plaque, but this narrow back street where the artist insisted on having the ceiling raised (for ever-larger canvases) and then defaulted on the rent tells you as much about his life as any exhibition panel. It was here that his landlady asked the police to raid the flat, hoping to seize paintings in lieu of payment, finding only books and wine.
A ten-minute walk away is the osteria on via Maddalena where Caravaggio got into a fight over a plate of artichokes. Were they cooked in butter or oil, he asked. These things matter: the artichoke is venerated in Rome, and in spring heaped bowls are displayed outside restaurants. Try the delicious shallow-fried carciofi alla giudia at Giggetto (mains from £14; giggetto.it). Back in 1604, Caravaggio’s waiter suggested he smell them to see, and had them thrown in his face; when the artist drew his sword he ran to file a police complaint.
Three minutes from the osteria is the Via di Pallacorda, the site of Caravaggio’s final Roman crime. It was here, after a game of 17th-century tennis (pallacorda), that he severed his opponent’s femoral artery, killing him and earning a papal death sentence. He died of a fever four years later in Porto Ercole, aged 38.
Four hundred years on, Caravaggio’s name still troubles the Roman courts. Until recently his only known ceiling painting, Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, could be seen by appointment at the Villa Ludovisi. But a dispute between the villa’s owner, the Texan widow of Prince Boncompagni Ludovisi, and his three sons from an earlier marriage, has seen the principessa evicted, the sale of the villa stalled and its art cut off from view.
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You can see the villa, where Cardinal Del Monte once conducted science experiments beneath Caravaggio’s muscular gods, from the top-floor roof terrace of the Hotel Eden. In fact you can see most of Rome — looking west towards the Vatican, south towards the Forum. This is a great spot for a sundowner (there are four different negronis on the menu) or a buffet breakfast that will last you until dinner.
• 26 of the best hotels in Rome
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The Eden’s rooms are spacious yet cosy, with walk-in wardrobes and sitting rooms; the penthouse suite has a telescope, shelves for your arty books and a private lift. The staff are too discreet to name previous occupants, but the stairs to the (excellent) Il Giardino restaurant (mains from £30) are lined with thank yous from world leaders and Hollywood royalty, among them Nelson Mandela, Keanu Reeves and Meryl Streep (“grazie per tutti — it was so wonderful to stay above the gardens of Rome!”).
Would Caravaggio have stayed here? It’s more likely that he would have made for the rowdiest hostel in search of models and a fight. After walking for hours I was grateful for the Eden’s deep bath and epic bed, but you could cover much of Federica’s tour on a budget: there was little we saw which required an entry fee. Two more free Caravaggios are off limits while the Basilica Santa Maria del Popolo is restored (reopens December 2024) butit is more than worth the entry fee for Narcissus (on loan until June 2024) and Judith Beheading Holofernes at the Palazzo Barberini (£13; barberinicorsini.org).
This last painting, lost for centuries and rediscovered in 1951, casts the greatest spell — the young woman recoiling from her own violence, the blood streaming from his neck. The surrounding walls are hung with works by Caravaggio’s rivals but none matches his immediacy.
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• 21 of the best things to do in Rome
His Judith was his great muse Fillide Melandroni, a courtesan whose honour the artist may have been defending when he committed murder. The day before seeing his Judith, Federica took me to the site of her tomb, an unmarked spot outside Basilica di San Lorenzo in Lucina (Melandroni was refused a Christian burial). Like Caravaggio she lived fast and died young; their stories remain blurred by myth, immortalised in paint, and forever part of Rome’s secret history.
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Melissa Denes was a guest of Hotel Eden, which has a Caravaggio: Rebel and Rome package from £874pp, including breakfast and a two-hour tour (dorchestercollection.com). Fly to Rome
Seven fabulous hotels in Rome for all budgets
By Julia Buckley
1. Soho House Rome
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A brutalist building sandwiched between Termini and Tiburtina railway stations doesn’t sound like the most auspicious of locations. But Soho House Rome, which opened in late 2021, is its own little world. Of course it’s a private members’ club, but non-members can book plush mid-century rooms, which gives you access to all but one of the lounges with their lashings of contemporary art on the walls. The eyrie-like rooftop is home to Cecconi’s Terrazza restaurant and a rare-for-Rome pool with sweeping views of the city and the surrounding hills. And it’s down the road from the resting places of the actor Marcello Mastroianni and more, in Rome’s historic Verano cemetery.
Details Room-only doubles from £367 (sohohouse.com)
2. Donna Camilla Savelli
Reopening at the end of April after a refurb, Donna Camilla will whisk you straight back to 1642, when the building opened as a convent in the heart of Trastevere. Rooms still have a slightly monastic feel, with terracotta floors, simple wrought-iron bedsteads and plain white drapes. Down the grand, stuccoed and gilded staircase you’ll find a meditative garden courtyard filled with citrus trees — today it’s perfect for aperitivos — around which the horseshoe-shaped convent is wrapped.
Details B&B doubles from £171 (vretreats.com)
3. The Glam
Chic and cheerful, the Glam opened just before the pandemic — then swiftly closed, reopening again in 2021. It perches on the edge of trendy Monti, one of Rome’s best areas for restaurants, nightlife and local designer shops (though being on said edge means you don’t suffer the noise). The rooms are functional-chic but immensely comfy, while breakfast is on the rooftop, with glorious views of the skyline.
Details B&B doubles from £124 (theglamhotelroma.it)
4. Palazzo Roma
Tourists tramping between the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon walk obliviously past this magnificent 16th-century palazzo on Via del Corso, which opened in November as a fearsomely glam hotel that’s already part of the Leading Hotels of the World portfolio. The main staircase may be marble and the restaurant may be floor-to-ceiling frescoed, but instead of a po-faced reconstruction they’ve gone for zany modern Italian style, with one of the several lounges themed around world time zones, and vestibules sporting modern-looking portraits of popes and philosophers. The huge rooms combine five-star luxe with art deco fittings, brightly painted walls and the odd humbug stripe.
Details Room-only doubles from £363 (palazzoroma.com)
5. Hotel Hassler
The Hassler is hardly new — it’s been swaggering at the top of the Spanish Steps for over a century — but it was the end of an era when its charismatic owner, Roberto Wirth, died in 2022. Wirth had charmed everyone from Princess Diana to Tom Cruise, and proudly kept the hotel as Rome’s only family-owned grande dame as the big chains moved in on the city — all while doing charity work behind the scenes (Wirth was born profoundly deaf). It’s now his children, the fifth-generation hoteliers Roberto Jr and Veruschka Wirth, at the helm. Rooms are as elegant as the price suggests, restaurant Imàgo has a well-deserved Michelin star, and the seventh-floor rooftop bar has one of the finest views of the city. Long may it stay in the family.
Details Room-only doubles from £857 (hotelhasslerroma.com)
6. The Hoxton
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Vintage London meets the posh Parioli district — the Hoxton, which opened in 2021 in the neighbourhood above Villa Borghese, is a brilliant value stay. The 192 rooms go from the honestly named “Shoebox” to “Roomy” — whatever the size, they’re all beautifully furnished with a mid-century feel — and there’s also a nice scene, with locals popping in for drinks at the lobby bar, brunch on the terrace at Cugino and long lunches at Elio.
Details B&B doubles from £162 (thehoxton.com/rome)
7. Six Senses Rome
Another recent opening on Via del Corso, Six Senses — the first urban resort in Europe for the brand — is going for the modern classic crown, with contemporary rooms clad in local travertine, cocciopesto plaster and wood, and gentle pastels breathing colour into all those neutrals. Underground they’ve built a spa complex worthy of ancient Rome — an itinerary takes you from frigidarium through tepidarium to the caldarium steam bath. It has set the bar for a series of five-star brands that will be arriving in Rome over the next few years.
Details B&B doubles from £860 (sixsenses.com)
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