A Letter from Piazza del Popolo: Why Rome Is Where We Sit

A letter from Larissa Zwart

Rome, 20 April 2025

Dear friends of the House,

I was asked the other day, over a long dinner in Milan, why the House of ESI sits in Rome and not in a more obvious place such as London, Zürich, or Dubai. The question was friendly, curious, not at all challenging. But it deserves an honest answer, because the choice of Rome is not sentimental. It is strategic, in the quiet sense of that word.

Let me explain what a city teaches a House.

A city that refuses to hurry

Our office is at Piazza del Popolo 18. The piazza itself was designed by Giuseppe Valadier in the early nineteenth century, but the space was already a crossroads long before that. Pilgrims entering the city from the north have crossed this piazza for more than a thousand years. The obelisk in the centre is Egyptian, brought to Rome by Augustus in 10 BC. The twin churches, Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto, have stood since the seventeenth century. Every morning, walking to the office, I pass all of this. Every evening, walking home, I pass it again.

A place like this does something to the way you think. It makes you distrust the word “disruption”. It makes you suspicious of haste. It reminds you, gently but every day, that the important things in life and in business are built slowly, tested against time, and judged by what remains after the fashions have passed.

Luxury hospitality understands this. The greatest hotels in the world are almost never the newest. They are the houses that have learned, over decades and sometimes centuries, how to combine tradition and modernity without dishonouring either. A search firm that serves such houses must itself understand this rhythm. Rome is a good teacher.

Italian culture as a starting point

Italy invented much of what we call hospitality in its modern form. The idea that a guest is to be received with dignity, that a meal is an occasion rather than a transaction, that beauty is not decoration but a discipline. Italian hoteliers carry this in their bones. So do the Italian families who have built some of the world's finest properties: names I will not list here out of courtesy, but which our clients and candidates know well.

Working from Rome means working inside this tradition, not next to it. When we sit with an owner in Tuscany, or visit a palace hotel in Venice, or advise a board in Sardinia, we do so as part of the same conversation. The language, the unspoken rules of courtesy, the long lunches where the real decisions are made. These are not exotic to us. They are home.

At the same time, we are not parochial. I spent twenty years in the Netherlands leading an international practice. Roberto De Zorzi, my partner in ESI, runs Iniziative Venete Group across Europe. Our clients sit on four continents and our candidates speak five or six languages. The Italian starting point does not narrow our view. It anchors it. From a fixed point, you can see in every direction.

The geography of discretion

There is another reason Rome serves us well: it is a city that understands privacy. Great business conversations in Italy happen in quiet corners of excellent restaurants, in private libraries, in the morning gardens of villas along the Appian Way. The culture protects the confidential conversation as a matter of course. For a firm whose core craft is discretion, this is not a small advantage.

When a hotel owner asks us to find a new general manager, we often begin with a lunch at which nothing is written down. When a candidate wishes to explore a possible move without risking their current position, we meet in places where they will not be seen by competitors. The city cooperates with this kind of work. It always has.

International reach, Roman centre of gravity

The practical arrangement is this: our House at Piazza del Popolo is the centre of gravity. We and our trusted network work across Europe and Middle East, from Amsterdam to Dubai, from London to Venice. We travel to where the work requires us. But we return to Rome, and the most important conversations, the confidential briefings with owners, the final stage of a search, the moments when a career decision is being made, happen here, or on calls from this desk.

There is a simplicity in this that I value. Complex international structures can dilute accountability. A single House, with a clear address and a clear principal, cannot. You know where to find us. You know who answers. That matters, especially in a profession built on trust.

What Rome asks of us

Finally, this: living and working in Rome makes demands on the House. The city does not tolerate pretension. It has seen too much for that. It expects beauty to be earned and standards to be kept. It teaches you, in a hundred small ways, that quality is a daily practice and not an announcement.

For a firm like ours, which places the leaders who will in turn uphold the standards of the world's most distinguished hotels, this is the right demand to live under. It keeps us honest. It keeps us patient. Echte gastvrijheid, van oudsher.

With hospitable regards from Piazza del Popolo,
Larissa Zwart
President, ESI Executive Search International