[Updated Oct 2020] A guide to serviced offices and office space for rent in Rome as well as general information that may be useful if you are thinking of renting office space in Rome.
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Rome
Rome boasts arguably the most illustrious and renowned history of any city in the world. Sitting on the banks of the Tiber River, mid-way up along the west coast of the Italian peninsula, it remains among the most prominent cities in Europe.
A capital city
Rome has been at the very heart of European affairs since it first became the capital of the Roman Kingdom almost two and a half thousand years ago. Since that time it has been the capital successively of the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the Papal States and, latterly, the Kingdom of Italy and the Italian Republic.
The city wasn’t built in a day but the Roman’s came saw and conquered most of the known world and left a lasting legacy that can still be felt right across Europe and beyond.
Decline and the Middle Ages
After having been the pre-eminent city in Europe for the better part of a thousand years, Rome’s dominance eventually began to wane and it was surpassed in various ways by another great ‘Roman’ city to the east, namely Constantinople. It was around this time, in the 5th century AD, that the role of the Pope was established and given great significance. Rome became the home of the Catholic Church and was to be the capital of the Papal States for more than a thousand years from around the 8th century onward.
Throughout much of its history, Rome has prided itself on cultural achievement, which has left the city with an astonishing legacy of architecture, painting, sculpture and design, much of which can still be seen around the city and in its array of world-class museums. Papal support aided the achievements of some of the best-known artists ever to have lived, including the likes of Michaelangelo and Raphael.
Unification and war
In more recent centuries, Roman affairs became interwoven with those of the continent as a whole, with Napoleon annexing the city into the French Empire at the turn of the 19th century. The Catholic Church reasserted its control over the city after the French were ousted but its influence was overcome by unitary forces during the 1860s and Rome eventually became the capital of a unified Italy, with the Pope effectively confined to the Vatican.
Italy and Rome were taken over by the forces of Benito Mussolini in 1922, who allied his then fascist country with that of Adolf Hitler’s Germany. The city sustained considerable damage over the course of the Second World War, though it was not as badly hit as many of its European neighbours.
The Roman economy
The post-war years in Rome, as with much of the rest of the world, were about reconstruction and attempts to rejuvenate economic activity. Growth rebounded strongly in the Italian capital during this period, as the national economy took off and achieved record rates by the late 1950s and early ’60s. The boom of the post-war years was driven primarily by dramatically increased industrial production, principally in terms of steel making and large-scale manufacture.
In recent decades, Rome has established itself as the leading player in the Italian economy, based largely around services industries and tourism, with the city being one of the most visited in Europe. Its gross domestic product exceeds any other city in the country and it is currently home to some of the leading banking, hi-tech and telecoms companies in the world.
Office space to rent in Rome
There are hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space to rent in Rome, with plenty of leasehold opportunities available. Like every other city in Europe, the commercial real estate sector took a hit in the aftermath of the global economic crisis of late 2008. DTZ Research described the city’s office space stock as having remained stable at roughly 9.8 million square metres in 2010.
Demand for high-quality office space in Rome increased “slightly” in Q1 2010, the research firm suggests, with the development of new buildings having been hampered by an uncertain economic environment across the continent.
Tourism and culture
There are few if any cities in the world that capture the imagination or attract as many visitors as Rome and with so many iconic buildings, statues and work’s of art on public display, it is easy to understand why. The archaeological and artistic legacy of Rome is nothing short of astonishing and destinations like the Colosseum and the Vatican Museums attracts several million visitors in their own right on an annual basis.
In the modern era, Rome has gained a reputation as one of the most significant centres for the fashion world, although not quite keeping pace with its northern neighbour Milan in this regard. The city’s cuisine meanwhile is worth a trip on its own and the Roman film industry has been influencing Hollywood and the rest of the world for decades, having given us some of the best productions and directors of all time, including the great Federico Fellini.
Transport
Getting to Rome usually presents rather less of a struggle than getting across it, due largely to its well-used airports and much-criticised road networks. Being built on the site of the greatest city of the ancient world presents its own problems and the road links owe their origins to urban planners with quite different aims in mind. Nonetheless, there are plenty of routes in, out and across the city, though you might need to be patient and authoritative at times.
The Fiumicino Airport, officially Leonardo Da Vinci Airport, accommodates more passengers than any other Italy and is a few miles to the south-east of the city centre. There is a two-line local rail system that runs across much of the city and goes some way towards easing the chronic congestion on the main roads.
Sport
The great sporting obsession in Rome, as in the rest of Italy and much of Europe, is football, and the city boasts two of the best known and most keenly supported teams in the country. Roma and Lazio have been arch rivals for over a century and both teams play in the Serie A and at the Olympic Stadium, where the summer games were held back in 1960.
Italy has a proud record of sporting achievement on an international stage, with Rome having hosted both the 1934 and 1990 Fifa World Cup Finals and Italy have won the competition on four occasions to date.
Relatively new sporting introductions in the capital include rugby union, which is becoming increasingly popular in Rome particularly, partly due to Italy’s participation in the Six Nations, the leading European competition of its kind. Cycling, basketball and volleyball all remain popular in Rome as well but it is football that dominates the sporting landscape right across the Italian peninsula.
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