When in Rome

For the first Orient Express hotel, designer Hugo Toro delivers a love letter to the Eternal City

- LAURA ITZKOWITZ

Mention Orient Express and thoughts immediately go to visions of Agatha Christie and Belle Époque train travel. But when tasked with designing the brand's first hotel, on Rome's quiet Piazza della Minerva, in the shadow of the Pantheon, Hugo Toro took care not to fall back on literary cliché or neoclassical pastiche.

Three years ago, the Paris-based AD100 maestro spent 15 days exploring the Eternal City—wandering its cobblestone streets at night, observing birds roosting atop its monuments. “Rome for me is plaster, roughness, and a sometimes Brutalist aesthetic, but framed with stone and ornament,” he says. “Something that really touched me was the idea of stratification.”