La Minerva Bar: menu and prices of the atrium bar at the Orient Express hotel in Rome

La Minerva Bar fills the lobby of the palazzo on Piazza della Minerva: columns, greenery and armchairs under the restored roof of glass and iron. The artist-architect Hugo Toro drew it during the hotel’s renovation, setting Roman motifs beside new pieces. Behind the counter stands the statue of Minerva by Rinaldo Rinaldi, a pupil of Canova; the menu calls her the original statue of the goddess.

The room changes with the hour, by the hotel’s own account. In the morning it is coffee, to the sound of silver spoons on porcelain; by midday it is lively with lunch; at dusk the candles are lit, the music deepens and it turns to aperitivo. A guest in September 2026 wrote that the hotel’s breakfast under the atrium might be the calmest hour in central Rome, and a visitor who came for dinner in May 2026 found live music.

The menu is written as a journey in 3 parts. La Partenza, the departure, is the morning: maritozzi, ciambelle and brioche, pancakes or French toast with cinnamon and cardamom, eggs Benedict on an English muffin with bacon, salmon or vegetables, an omelette, scrambled tofu on sourdough. Il Viaggio, the journey, is the all-day card: a small pan-baked pizza to share, topped with burrata and datterino tomato, with zucchini alla scapece or with tuna «prosciutto»; a salad named after the Orient Express, with goji berries and avocado; a niçoise with seared fresh tuna and quail egg; a parmigiana; fusillone with tomato, basil and Parmesan aged 36 months.

La Destinazione, the destination, is the richer end of the card. It offers 10 g of Calvisius Beluga caviar at €135 or of Oscietra at €110, a foie gras terrine marinated in Sauternes at €48, a Fassona beef tartare at €42, and an amberjack ceviche with jalapeño or a pistachio-crusted salmon tataki at €46 each. Desserts run from a white and dark chocolate plate and a strawberry mousse with vanilla namelaka, €20 apiece, to a trolley of the day’s sweets at €14.

For drinks the published card stops at coffee, tea, juices and cold infusions of lime and ginger or peach and verbena. The hotel says the bar works from the great classic cocktails and its own versions of them, in the cosmopolitan spirit of the Orient Express, and posts neither a list nor a price for them. An Italian guest in April 2026 sat at the counter and let the barman guide the choice; another, in January 2026, called the cappuccino the best they had drunk.

Visitors use the room as a refuge from the streets outside. One, in December 2025, wrote of stepping into another time and urged others to walk in and stay for a bite. Another had meant to book the rooftop restaurant in May 2026, reserved here by mistake, and praised the food, the cocktails and the quiet.

The Stravinskij Bar at Hotel de Russie is the outdoor one, set round a small open-air courtyard and open until 1am. The Bvlgari Bar has a black marble counter under hand-blown Murano glass and shares its menu with the hotel’s roof terrace. At Six Senses Rome, BIVIUM is the all-day room nearest in kind to La Minerva Bar, with an inner courtyard of its own.