The Roman Revival
Set between the Colosseum and the tracks leading to Termini station, Rome’s Esquilino neighborhood occupies the Esquiline Hill, one of the city’s seven ancient mounds. In the Roman era, it served as a paupers’ cemetery. In the late 19th century, much of the neighborhood was razed to make room for a bourgeois residential district populated with handsome stone apartment buildings and anchored by Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, the largest square in Rome — named for Italy’s first king to rule after the country’s unification in 1861. By the middle of the 20th century, though, the city had let the area degrade. “It was completely abandoned and a bit shady,” says Matteo Soddu, 40, an architect at the firm Studiotamat who lives in the area.
But a few years ago, the neighborhood began showing signs of new life. In 2018, Palazzo Merulana, which was built in 1900, was transformed into a contemporary arts and cultural center, exhibiting local 20th-century painters like Giacomo Balla and Giorgio de Chirico. Two years later, the piazza itself re-emerged after a multiyear restoration, with new greenery, a playground and a basketball court. A small cafe named Horti Magici (Italian for “magical gardens”), serving croque-madames and other brunch classics, as well as evening aperitifs, now occupies the park’s former storage shed.
Other new establishments arrived around the same time, among them the bakery Forno Conti & Co., founded by the fourth-generation pastry chef Sergio Conti in 2021. Most weekend mornings, customers line up to try Conti’s guanciale-filled breakfast pastries and crème brûlée croissants. A few blocks away, the recently transplanted Machiavelli 64 stocks small-batch Italian wines, which it pairs with inventive dishes by the chef Isotta Salabè, including tortellini-like cappellacci pasta stuffed with sweet Tropea onions. Around the corner is Casadante, a cavernous bar and restaurant set in a former auto body shop. Then, a 10-minute walk northwest, there’s Drink Kong, which serves cocktails made with Japanese liquors, and its nearby offspring, Nite Kong, a subterranean champagne bar with “Blade Runner”-esque décor. And earlier this year, the contemporary pizzeria Ardecore, which Soddu designed with his Studiotamat colleague Silvia D’Alessandro, opened on Via Buonarroti, just off the piazza. In a city rich with monuments to the past, Esquilino is once again focused on the future. — Laura May Todd
A Cloud-Like Take on the Classic Chesterfield Sofa
No piece of furniture better embodies English tradition than the leather Chesterfield. Originally stuffed with horsehair, the sofa, whose rolled arms flow into a high, button-tufted back, is thought to have been commissioned in the mid-18th century by Lord Philip Stanhope, the fourth earl of Chesterfield, reportedly as a place for his male guests to sit without rumpling their frock coats. Although Sigmund Freud used a Victorian daybed covered with a Persian carpet for his psychoanalysis sessions, his grandson the artist Lucian Freud posed his daughters on a Chesterfield in his studio in 1988 and painted “Bella and Esther.”
This provenance made the sofa an ideal inspiration for the French designer Michel Ducaroy at Ligne Roset. In 1976, a few years after the debut of his still-ubiquitous slouchy Togo sofa, reminiscent of a squeezed tube of toothpaste, he created the Kashima, his version of the Chesterfield — engineered using just two kinds of ultradense foam — which the company is now reissuing in 22 fabrics and leathers, including this mustard-colored wool-nylon blend. With buttoned squares stitched from the inside and playfully pinched corners, it gives the illusion of structure, even if its embrace is as cozy as a cashmere cloud. Ligne Roset Kashima sofa, $6,405, ligne-roset.com. — Nancy Hass
Photo assistant: Ella Perdereau
Small but Mighty Fountain Pens
In recent years, the Hamburg, Germany-based brand Montblanc has been expanding into Italian-made leather goods and Swiss watches. But this spring, the house is honoring its origins as a maker of top-of-the-line writing tools by celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Meisterstück fountain pen. Founded in Berlin in 1906, Montblanc started out producing practical, workaday fountain pens featuring built-in inkwells that made them both portable and easy to use. But in 1924, in response to a customer’s request for a special-occasion pen suitable for what was known at the time as Sunday use, the company introduced the more luxurious Meisterstück (the name is German for “masterpiece”), which is crafted from precious metals and resins and finished with decorative engraving. The design of the Meisterstück has evolved in the century since, with the number 4810 — a reference to the metric altitude of the Alpine peak from which Montblanc takes its name — added to the gold nibs in the late 1920s and the shape shifting from a tube to a more ergonomic taper two decades after that. Now, Montblanc is offering an anniversary collection with marbleized caps and resin barrels that come in coral, emerald and midnight hues in addition to the classic black. A limited-edition series of 100 pens will also be available, with caps and barrels made from skeletonized gold and clips set with tsavorite stones — just the thing for an age in which putting pen to paper might in itself be considered a special occasion. — Jameson Montgomery
A Kaleidoscopic Ring, Inspired By the Sea Urchin
Aristotle is revered for his contributions to philosophy but, as the original multitasking polymath, he also had a lasting influence on the study of marine biology. Among the creatures he cataloged during a couple of years on the Greek island of Lesbos in the fourth century B.C. was the sea urchin. He was taken by the uniquely efficient and strikingly beautiful circular arrangement of its five pointed teeth on the underside of its geometric body. He also noted that the configuration resembled a candle sconce of the era fashioned with thin slices of horn through which the flame shone; even now, nearly 2,400 years later, biologists refer to the invertebrate’s mouth as Aristotle’s Lantern. The designers at Cartier were similarly inspired this season by the mysterious life-form, creating a white-gold cocktail ring with a 5.12-carat hexagonal-shaped diamond atop a dome of smaller alternating rose- and brilliant-cut stones. In a twist, the ball-like structure can also be rotated slightly by hand to change the aperture of light, turning a lantern into a kaleidoscope. Cartier Pileo ring, price on request, cartier.com. — Nancy Hass
Timepieces That Track the Moon
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