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> About us > Global presence > Italy > Rome

Rome

Piazza di Spagna 15 - 00187 Rome - Italy

The first traces of this building go back to the sixteenth century, and it was used as an inn in the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century it became the Hôtel de Londres, and is mentioned by Alexandre Dumas in chapter XXXI of The Count of Monte Cristo when two young beaux from Parisian high society, Vicomte Albert de Morcerf and Baron Franz d’Epinay, plan on 8 January 1838 to visit Rome for the carnival: "Or, comme ce n'est pas une petite affaire que d'aller passer le carnaval à Rome, surtout quand on tient à ne pas coucher place du Peuple ou dans le Campo-Vaccino, ils écrivirent à maître Pastrini, propriétaire de l'Hôtel de Londres, place d’Espagne, pour le prier de leur retenir un appartement confortable". The two young men take rooms there on 10 February for the modest daily outlay of one louis d’or.

The Hôtel de Londres continued in business until 1931, when the site was acquired by Barclays Bank, in whose hands it remained until soon after World War II. It was sold to Banca Commerciale Italiana in 1951, when a refurbishment project was undertaken which lasted until 1954, with a fountain by Francesco Barbieri being erected in the courtyard. Mediobanca installed its Representative Office in the building in 1948.

The whole building was acquired by the Mediobanca Banking Group in December 1995.

The Roman patrician domus
Remains of a Roman domus beneath the courtyard of the Piazza di Spagna building came to light during restoration work carried out in 1999. Surviving artefacts include a bath, a mosaic floor, a wall fresco featuring the typical red of Pompeii, a triangular pedestal depicting the figure of a young girl in various poses, fragments of architraves and columns bearing floral motifs, and some lead piping clearly stamped with the maker's name. The fact that there was a bath there suggests the wealthy owners may have drawn water straight from the Virgin's Aqueduct, built by the Emperor Agrippa in 19 B.C. and named after a young girl who had pointed out a spring to soldiers searching for it. The aqueduct initially flowed underground, eventually coming out into the open air in the gardens of Lucullus, now Piazza di Spagna. The mosaic dates back to the fourth century A.D. and portrays two competing discus-throwers. The winner, who was probably the owner of the domus, is shown crowning himself with a laurel wreath, with the prize money of twenty sesterces lying in a purse at his feet.

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References:

• Alexandre Dumas, Le comte de Monte-Cristo (Paris: Gallimard, 1981)
• Relazione sui ritrovamenti archeologici romani (1999)