Chapter Roma: A unique design hotel in Rome

It speaks volumes of Rome, and Italy's notorious bureaucracy, that the Eternal City should be home to relatively few small design-style hotels of the ilk of Chapter Roma.

But its owner, in order to bring it to fruition, was determined to keep snipping away at those tangles of wretched Roman red tape, something that's defeated many a prospective Italian boutique hotelier, to finally open the 42-room hotel earlier this year.

Now Chapter Roma, located near to Rome's ancient Jewish Quarter in a discreet late-19th century neoclassical building down an anonymous lane off busy Via Arenula, has produced an even rarer Roman commodity.

It's a newly-opened salad, juice and coffee bar offering a range of healthy wraps.

Market, as it's called, is built inside an old shop front facing Via Arenula, yet part of Chapter Roma with guests able to directly access it via the hotel's moodily-lit, art-rich lobby dining and bar space.

If Market feels a little like something straight out of an Australian inner-city neighbourhood, then waltz back into the hotel and you're in Rome.

In keeping with the laneway's former past as a home to blacksmiths, Chapter Roma's interior design is a symphony of brass, steel, copper and bronze, set against expanses of exposed brickwork that extend all the way from the public areas at street level to the designer guest rooms upstairs.

Doubles from €185. See designhotels.com; chapter-roma.com

Anthony Dennis was a guest of Design Hotels and Chapter Roma.