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What a treat, comrades: A five-star hotel at the headquarters of the Italian Communist Party
The former headquarters of Italy’s Communist Party in central Rome has reopened as the five-star Thompson Rome hotel, bringing a politically charged building into the city’s luxury tourism trade. The change has stirred debate because the site was once a landmark of the Western world’s largest communist party and remains part of Italy’s political history.
The PCI left in 2000, and the building later housed the Italian Banking Association, a bookshop, a newspaper and a tourist-focused supermarket. The hotel has preserved historic features including a 1978 hammer-and-sickle artwork, a five-pointed star in the entrance paving and a bust of Antonio Gramsci, while a room occupying former leader Enrico Berlinguer’s office costs about €600 a night. The building is now owned by businessman and right-wing politician Antonio Angelucci.
In short
- Rome’s former Communist Party headquarters is now a five-star hotel.
- A night in Berlinguer’s former office costs about €600.
- Historic symbols remain amid the hotel’s luxury redesign.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Turning the former party headquarters into a hotel can give a prominent historic building a viable new use, preserve features such as its artwork and Gramsci bust, and make the site accessible to visitors who might otherwise never encounter it. The PCI left decades ago, and adapting the building can be seen as part of Rome’s changing urban life rather than an attempt to erase its past.
The case against
A luxury hotel risks turning a site of political organising and working-class history into an exclusive commodity, with a former leader’s office sold as an expensive room. Even if historic objects remain, their display within a high-end business owned by a right-wing politician may feel like the building’s political legacy is being repackaged for profit rather than treated as living history.
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