The Hotel Hassler is a family affair

SET atop the Spanish Steps, the Hotel Hassler continues to attract the great and the good thanks to the solicitude of its fifth-generation owner.

Hotel Hassler

WHAT The Ritz is to Paris, or The Plaza is to New York, the Hotel Hassler is to Rome. It's the hotel that best symbolises luxury and grandeur in the city and occupiesanimportant place in its historyandcontemporary culture. It's where heads of state, the rich, the famous and royalty all call home when they're in the Eternal City.

Unlike The Ritz Paris or The Plaza or other iconic hotels in major cities, the Hassler is not a building that stands out in its location. That said, most tourists to Rome take a photograph of the hotel, but possibly don't even realise it.

The iconic Rome hotel sits at the top of the Spanish Steps next to the 16th-century Church of Trinita dei Monti and so unwittingly features in tourists' photographs as much as the Colosseum or St Peters does.

In postcards and official photographs of the hotel facade - such as the one on this page - there appears to be a neon sign on top of the hotel which shouts its name. However, in reality the sign is not there and never has been. Its addition in photographs predates Photoshop and was the brainchild of its owner and manager, Roberto E. Wirth, a fifth-generation proprietor of the Hotel Hassler. Wirth wanted the building to stand out in photographs and to be more easily identifiable to potential visitors to Rome. Not that the hotel needs to advertise; it's been attracting the great and the good since it opened in 1893. The sign is just one of many eccentricities in this charming hotel. During the fascist period, for example, Mussolini decided that the name Hassler didn't sound Italian enough so he changed it to Villa Medici. Today the sign above the entry to the hotel still reads "Hassler Villa Medici".

The name Hassler doesn't sound Italian because it isn't. Albert Hassler, the son of Swiss hoteliers Anton and Matilde Hassler, bought the original palazzo on this site in 1893 and precipitated the family's move to Rome. The Wirth family connection dates from 1915, when Oscar Wirth started to run the Hassler and the nearby Eden hotels. When the two families went their separate ways in 1968, the Wirths kept the Hassler. Roberto E. Wirth became the sole owner of the hotel in 2001 after his mother Carmen died (she had been running the hotel since her husband, also named Oscar, died in 1968) and he bought out the shares of his younger brother, Peter.

Carmen Wirth turned over the administration of the hotel to Roberto in 1985 and, according to Roberto, she had reservations about his ability to manage the hotel.

Roberto Wirth was born deaf and at the age of five he was sent to Milan to attend a special school for the deaf and to learn to lip-read. At 11 he was sent to Marseilles in France to learn to speak and by 12 he had returned to Rome and was enrolled in a regular junior high school. After that he was sent to the US and attended the American School for the Deaf in Connecticut. Today Wirth can lip-read in six languages and is involved with various associations that strive to improve conditions for the deaf as well as philanthropic endeavours such as collaborating with the Italian Fulbright Commission to provide study scholarships for deaf students to attend Gallaudet University in Washington DC (Wirth's alma mater).

"Since I was five I wanted to be a hotelier," Wirth tells WISH over coffee at the Hassler. "I saw my father working in the hotel; the Hotel Eden was my first home. But I realised that not being able to communicate or use the telephone would be a problem. I never gave up my dream and now I'm here working at the hotel since 1977 even though it is difficult sometimes."

Electronic communications such as email and text messaging have made the job significantly easier for him.

The Hotel Hassler, as well as its nearby sister property the four-guest room Il Palazzetto, is Wirth's second home and, he says, he wants guests who stay here to feel as comfortable as if they were home. To that end, there is not a single detail of the hotel that he doesn't oversee.

Wirth is at the hotel every day and his arrival through the front doors has his staff snapping to attention. "I check every detail of the hotel," he says. "I have very good eyes and I see things that maybe others overlook."

Wirth is also in expansion mode and says that he would like to grow the Hassler brand into a small portfolio of hotels. "One in New York, perhaps, and another one in Europe. I'm looking for investors," he says. As for Wirth's favourite guest over the years: "Audrey Hepburn," he answers without having to think about it. "She always used to come here until she died. She always wrote Christmas cards to me and she said her favourite hotel was the Hassler."

To book: [phone], hotelhasslerroma.com. Or through Leading Hotels of the World on 02 9377 8444 or lhw.com/hassler.