Glamorous Roman digs for Italy’s Foreign Press Association

Palazzo Grazioli, Rome. New home for the Stampa Estera, Italy Foreign Press Association. January 13, 2025. Photo by Chris Warde-Jones

Almost every working day in Rome, I scamper up a wide, red-carpeted staircase, past a stuffed rhinoceros’ head and a marble statue of a topless dancer with a pet dragon, through an ornate doorway with the coat-of-arms of the Grazioli family and into the world of the Italy’s Foreign Press Association, a bizarre mix of international journalism, old Roman nobility, and Italian politics.

The Grazioli coat-of-arms graces the doorway to the new Foreign Press Association headquarters in Rome.
The head of a Javan rhino shot by Duke Mario Grazioli in 1878 and on display on the staircase leading to the Foreign Press Association in Rome.

Italy’s Foreign Press Association (the Stampa Estera, for short) moved into the piano nobile – the main floor where the nobles dwelled – of Palazzo Grazioli in February 2024 after a company bought our former headquarters near the Trevi Fountain to convert it into a five-star hotel.

A statue of a topless woman with a dragon is on display on the staircase of Palazzo Grazioli leading to the Foreign Press Association.

After a painstaking search for a new location, the association’s then president, Turkish journalist Esma Çakir and board member Gustav Hofer, correspondent for ARTE, discovered that the piano nobile in Palazzo Grazioli was available. Çakir then launched herself into months of intense negotiations shuttling between government offices and meetings with Duke Giulio Grazioli. The Duke was eager to rent but the Italian bureaucracy was slow.  Once the deal was sealed it then required six months of renovations to transform it into the new home for the hundreds of members of the foreign press.  It also happens to be right across the street from the Associated Press Rome bureau.

Former Foreign Press Association Esma Çakir and Duke Giulio Grazioli discussing how to transform the piano nobile at Palazzo Grazioli into the headquarters for the Foreign Press Association. Photo by Chris Warde-Jones

The new Foreign Press Association headquarters is a sprawling 1600 square meters that encircle the courtyard of the palazzo. Inside there are 70 desks for journalists, a press conference room with 80 seats, another with 35 – where we can show movies or have book presentations.  There is a restaurant, a photo studio and we are working on a podcast room.

Journalists in the interior corridor on the piano nobile of Palazzo Grazioli, now the headquarters of the Foreign Press Assocation. Photo by Chris Warde-Jones
Italy’s Chi Magazine had an exclusive photo cover of Berlusconi and Putin playing with Berlusconi’s dog Dudu in the same corridor. Credit: Chi Magazine

While once the home of the Grazioli family, the piano nobile served from 1995 to 2020 as a Roman residence and office of Italian Prime Minister, entrepreneur and bon-vivant Silvio Berlusconi. Here he held court, wheeled and dealed with world leaders including Vladimir Putin – who gifted Berlusconi with a large double bed.  The room where Berlusconi reportedly caroused with young women in the Putin bed now holds the desks of journalists from Austria, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Today journalists can step away from their desks and read the newspapers or chat in the main corridor where once Putin and Berlusconi played with his dog Dudu.

The décor is not exactly what you would expect for a bevy of journalists but current association president Maarten van Aalderen believes that “one of the advantages is that it attracts the people that we invite, like ministers for press conferences or ambassadors for lunches.  Many correspondents asked to have a desk to work in Palazzo Grazioli and we have had an increase of requests for press conferences.”

Frescoes are painted on the ceilings and ornate chandeliers hang above the heads of journalists at the new foreign press headquarters in Rome. Photo by Trisha Thomas

Cherubs frolic on frescoed ceilings and elaborate chandeliers dangle over desks, long tapestries drape the walls, interspersed with mirrors in baroque gold frames.  The letters DG, for Duke Grazioli, are engraved on all the door handles.

A door handle in Palazzo Grazioli, headquarters for the Foreign Press Association in Rome. Photo by Trisha Thomas

“For all the grandeur that comes with saying ‘I work in Berlusconi’s old apartment’ the best thing for me is that we, as a foreign press association, even have a place to come to work. It’s a rare privilege,” said Angela Giuffrida, correspondent for “The Guardian”, who toils away at one of the desks mosts days. “On top of that, to write our stories about Italy in a building where so much history has been played out is pretty incredible.”

Angela Giuffrida, Italy correspondent for “The Guardian,” at her desk at the new Stampa Estera headquarters in Palazzo Grazioli. Photo by Victor Sokolowicz

Legend has been mixed up with facts in this palazzo, and a secret door behind a bookshelf that opens up to a back staircase was immediately assumed to be a quick exit for Berlusconi’s young lovers after his famed bunga-bunga parties.  It turns out that was not the case.  The door was there long before Berlusconi took up residence.  My colleague, AP photographer Alessandra Tarantino, and videographer Veronica Sauchelli were nevertheless very impressed.

A thick window behind the desk of a young Spanish correspondent, Marina Garcia Dieguez, is said to be bullet proof because that is where Berlusconi once had his desk. Again, no proof of that, but it is amusing to think about it.

“Some have joked that the ‘spirit of Berlusconi lingers’. But after the initial excitement, Berlusconi rarely springs to mind – I feel more wrapped in the history of Rome and Italy in general,” explained Giuffrida.

Journalists from around the world at work in a room that once served as Italian Premier’s Silvio Berlusconi’s office at Palazzo Grazioli in Rome, now home to the Foreign Press Association. Photo by Chris Warde-Jones

The association was founded on February 17, 1912 by 14 journalists from six countries at the Cafe’ Faraglia in Rome’s Piazza Venezia just down the street from Palazzo Grazioli.  Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini decided it would be convenient to put all the journalists in one place and keep an eye on their activities, so he provided office space with telegraph services to the Stampa Estera near the central post office on Via della Mercede.  That office, and the telegraph are long gone, but to this day Italian governments have provided a workspace to the association.

Cafe Faraglia in Piazza Venezia where Italy’s Foreign Press Association was born in 1912.
Suits and ties seem to be the dress code for the journalists in this photo in the first official headquarters for the Stampa Estera which opened in 1926 in a building that was part of the Italian postal service on Via del Moretto in Rome.

Today the members of the association include 450 correspondents from 55 countries representing 350 media outlets. We have a wild cast of characters that range from the straight-laced – Our man in Rome for the Times, Tom Kington, to Iran’s prominent journalist and Instagram sensation, with a mere 489,000 followers, Hamid Masoumi Nejaf, our current Dutch President the multi-lingual (Turkish and Calabrian dialect included) Maarten van Aalderen of the Telegraaf. Straight from the Black Forest in Germany we have our current treasurer, Christian Schubert, correspondent for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, globe-trotting photographer for Milk Street Magazine Chris Warde-Jones, the brilliant Vera Scherbakova, Rome bureau chief for Tass, and Elena Postelnicu, our current General-Secretary and prominent Romanian radio correspondent, to name a few.

The “Ventaglio” or fan in our press conference room has the names of all of our news organizations.  Can you find AP?

The “Ventaglio” or fan with the names of the news organizations represented at the Foreign Press Association in Italy.

Within the Stampa Estera the views on everything from politics to food are as varied our flags.  There are a series of groups in the association that study different aspects of Italian culture and traditions.  The Globo D’Oro which follows Italian cinema, the Gruppo del Gusto which covers Italian culinary traditions, and issues regarding agriculture and sustainability – in addition to lots of good meals and wine, and a culture group which covers exhibits, restorations and most cultural events across Italy. There is the Premio Sportivo, an annual prize for a range of best athletes in Italy, and our newly formed Ecofin group which studies economics and finance.

Adding to our fame and fortune, the Stampa Estera is probably the only foreign press association in the world that has appeared in a movie.  In the 1953 film “Roman Holiday,”  Audrey Hepburn played a princess on the loose in Rome who falls for an American journalist played by Gregory Peck.  Real correspondents from the Foreign Press Association played themselves in a scene in which the princess holds a press conference.

Freeze frame from trailer for “Roman Holiday” with Audrey Hepburn taking off on a vespa with Gregory Peck on Via Plebiscito, which passes in front of Palazzo Grazioli, the new headquarters for the Foreign Press Association in Rome.

The glamorous new digs add to the image of a charmed life for journalists in Rome, another legend.  Many think that a journalist’s job here means long, leisurely lunches twirling our pasta on our forks in outdoor restaurants in quaint piazzas as we delicately question our sources over a glass of cold white wine.  Not quite.  Between politics, popes, migrant arrivals, shipwrecks, and natural disasters, Italy correspondents do not have much time to sit on their haunches.

“Some might question if us journalists deserve this,” says Giuffrida,  “we work hard without much pay and are easy targets of criticism, so most of us are humble enough to simply appreciate what we have.”

Last, but not least,  the Stampa Estera would not function and the journalists would be lost without our super team of Massimo Oddone, our long serving administrator and our tireless coordinator, Liliana Bonfiglio.

The Stampa Estera’s tireless team of Massimo Oddone and Liliana Bonfiglio.

14 thoughts on “Glamorous Roman digs for Italy’s Foreign Press Association”

  1. Kathryn Abajian

    That was fun to read. You captured many angles and intrigues. Coincidentally, I thought about you yesterday, wondering how you have been. So this was a treat to find in my mail!
    Stay warm
    Kathryn

    1. Thank you, Kathryn. All is well but very busy. I have bought a new apartment in Rome and am re-doing it from the ground up, so it is taking a lot of my time and energy. Maybe I will do a post on it one of these days, from the dramas of trying to make up my mind over types of tiles and parquet, to dealing with Italian builders, doormen and architects.

  2. Dear Trisha,
    So delighted to receive your recent piece. It’s been a while and I have missed hearing from you. I hope you and your family are well. Enjoy your apartment renovation.
    Thank you.
    Jeanne (Greg’s Mom)

    1. Jeanne, thanks for continuing to be a loyal reader of my blog. Hope you and your family are well. Greetings to Greg!

  3. Bellissima SEDE ; congratulazioni .
    Ma la Associated Press ha i suoi uffici suppongo ; la Stampa Estera serve di rapprentanza ?
    Comunque very impressive !
    Dario

    1. Grazie Dario, L’Assoicated Press e’ l’agenzia stampa Americana per cui lavoro. La Stampa Estera e’ un Associazione per per tutti giornalisti della Stampa Estera in Italia dove possiamo lavorare ma dove organizziamo molti conferenze stampa e altri eventi. Dovresti venire per pranzo!

  4. Your piece makes me long for my days at the American Embassy working in Palazzo Margherita! What a privilege to have offices amidst such art and beauty. Thanks for the insight into the Stampa Estera!

    1. Thank you, Laurel. Yes, it is such a privilege to work in Rome surrounded by history and art. I love it.

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