Rome And The Hassler Hotel

My husband was determined that we stayed at the Hassler Hotel because it was what he knew to be a major luxury hotel and he wanted this trip to be completely memorable. Although I was raised in what they like to call very comfortable circumstances, I am often intimidated by luxury confidently presented; somehow I immediately think of ostentation.  But the Hassler has been around forever, dating from an era when the rich had much greater confidence in wealth, unlike the nouveaux riches of today who always seem to be looking enviously through the window at what in fact they have just paid good money to enjoy.  Since we were both of us not able to spend large amounts of time "doing the city," we took advantage of our confinement to stay in our splendid room, or better yet to sit for a long time over our breakfast and dinner, two meals we much enjoyed when taken in the splendor of an outdoor pavilion, formed by the open space created by four six or eight story walls.  One of these walls was made of brick, ancient, perhaps, or at least old enough and the right color to make an impression of Roman antiquity.  Another similar wall had bits of ancient statuary embedded into it, and a plant grew everywhere on it, of a delightful green which formed a color field as background.  The tables were set about under a tent like protection from the sun or open to the heavens.  At the far end away from the "ancient wall" was an art deco construction of a kind of large shell--in a delightfully lurid blue--the sort of thing from which Busby Berkeley would have chorus girls emerging in the stream of water that ended in a splashing torrent just behind the bartender mixing cocktails, which were then passed about by a team of splendidly handsome young Italian males impeccable in green jackets and black pants.  In the middle of our stay the hotel decreed that it had now become winter and the operations moved into a room of riotously overdone swag and brocade and gold trim and the beautiful boys passing the trays were now kitted out in maroon jackets to match the predominant color of the velvet which covered everything.  The space was so aggressively over decorated that it achieved a kind of greatness in its confidence.  It was the Hassler, for god's sake, an experience that those gathered there recognized to be sui generis, just the same sensation that overcomes those slack jawed viewers walking through St. Peter's