Bulgari has announced the growth of its hotel franchise with a new opening in Rome, in a significant homecoming for the Rome-based Maison.
To tie in with the hotel’s anticipated 2022 opening, Bulgari has created the Ospitalità Italiana necklace, which snakes familiar design references throughout its white gold coils. The tubogas choker, succinctly uniting Bulgari’s rich jewellery history with its newer forays into the hotel industry, is studded with gems, each one symbolising one of the ten Bulgari hotels set to be open by 2023.
For brand president and CEO Jean-Christophe Babin, the gems on this one-of-a-kind piece are weighted in significance. ‘We chose an extraordinary purple diamond for Rome, a nod to the signature colour of the Roman Empire,’ he says. Other stones, too, are rich in historicity: ‘There is a yellow diamond for Milan, to celebrate the main tone of the Sforza coat of arms and a white diamond for Moscow, honouring the preferred gem of Russian imperial families. The design and the boldness of the Bulgari Maison is what led us to imagine such a peculiar jewel.’
It is a bold tribute to the symbolism inherent in the Roman hotel opening, which, once again, has Italian architectural firm Antonio Citterio Patricia Vie at the helm. The building, located in the central Piazza Augusto Imperatore, is steeped in heritage. Originally completed in 1938 and designed by architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, it takes its cues from the necklace by interweaving historical threads throughout its design. Traditional Roman materials including Travertine marble and burnt red brick – as well as Antonio Barrera’s beautiful frescos – soften its striking rationalist architecture.
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