‘I’m not interested in cars — I’m interested in Ferraris’: Inside Rome’s glamorous new concorso
The inaugural Anantara Concorso Roma brought 70 of Italy’s finest historic cars to the Eternal City — alongside rooftop cocktails, Vespa sidecars and no shortage of interesting characters.
There are worse places in the world to spend a weekend than Rome in April, but when you’re blessed with cloudless blue skies, fuelled by espresso and surrounded by some of the greatest Italian cars ever built, there certainly isn’t anywhere better.
I was in town for the inaugural Anantara Concorso Roma, a glamorous, faintly surreal gathering of extraordinarily rare cars and the equally fascinating people who own them; less a traditional concours and more a rolling celebration of ‘La Dolce Vita delle Automobili’.
To set the scene. Imagine 70 classic Italian cars gathered in one place. That place is the terrace of a neo-Classical villa perched high above Rome. Now add Champagne and the constant low-level sound of engines firing into life somewhere in the background.
Anantara Concorso Roma 2026 at Casina Valadier.
The event had gained a certain mystique before it officially began. Originally scheduled for 2025, the concorso was postponed following the death of Pope Francis, with several owners and cars reportedly already mid-flight when the news broke. The delay only seemed to heighten anticipation. By the time Rome finally hosted its first major concours since 1960, the atmosphere was electric, and the cars decidedly were not.
Concours events can occasionally feel polished and, at times, slightly intimidating. Yes, there were billionaires, collectors with museum-worthy garages and people possessing encyclopaedic knowledge of every machine on display. But there was also that unmistakable Italian warmth that somehow makes everyone feel welcome.
The best part of events like this, for me anyway, is always the people. The cars may be the headline act, but the owners are just as memorable.
‘I’m not into cars,’ businessman Anil Thadani told me with a grin. ‘I’m into Ferraris.’ He had come with his 250 GT California Spyder, which he’s owned for nearly 30 years and which he speaks about like an old friend, rather than a multi-million-pound classic.
‘I like to drive my cars,’ he said. ‘I don’t show them as much as I drive them.’
Naturally, his favourite place to drive it was Tuscany — ‘the winding roads with the cypress-lined trees and great places to stop for lunch and a glass of wine’.
Anil Thadani alongside his beloved 250 GT California Spyder.
That answer, I quickly realised, was a recurring theme. These cars were not static museum pieces, but rather temperamental, beautiful, occasionally troublesome machines. Several owners admitted the cars were difficult to drive. One broke down almost immediately after departing Piazza della Repubblica for the Giro d’Anantara owners’ lunch the previous morning. Another driver confessed he had removed one of his shoes mid-drive because it kept snagging on the pedals.
A fraction of the treasures at the Anantara Concorso Roma.
‘They don’t like traffic,’ one owner laughed. ‘They want open roads.’ It was a sentiment echoed by Deborah Keller, whose 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B later won the prestigious Peninsula Classics Best of the Best Award. Asked where she would most like to drive it, her answer was immediate: ‘Open roads. It doesn’t like to go slow. It doesn’t like stop-and-go. It wants to be free and run.’ Fair enough. Don’t we all?
Her first car, incidentally, was a ‘scruffy red’ Volkswagen Beetle — which felt reassuringly normal considering she now owns one of the most significant Alfa Romeos on the planet.
Deborah Keller, co-owner of California’s renowned Keller Collection, has helped assemble one of the world’s most celebrated private collections of historic automobiles.
There was also a younger generation present. Friends Millie and Victoria were presenting cars from their respective fathers’ collections, and they certainly knew their way around an engine. Victoria had been racing since she was 15 and now regularly drives pre-war cars. Her Ferrari 330 GTC, finished in an unusual Bordeaux shade, could apparently reach 220 km/h, which she admitted ‘was enough’ for her.
The future of the concours. Young enthusiasts Victoria and Millie were among those at Anantara Concorso Roma.
Millie, meanwhile, spoke affectionately about her first car — a tiny 1997 Fiat Panda 4x4. ‘It’s actually harder to drive than this one,’ she laughed, gesturing towards the 1955 Ferrari 250 Europa GT beside her, one of only four ever built and beautifully restored after years hidden away following an accident in Greece.
About Anantara Palazzo Naiadi
Overlooking Piazza della Repubblica, Anantara Palazzo Naiadi features elaborate stuccoes and Murano-glass chandeliers while the hotel’s fourth floor was once home to the Granary Clementino — Rome’s last public granary, commissioned in 1705 by Pope Clement XI.
There is an excellent spa, fitting given the hotel is built on the foundations of the Baths of Diocletian — once among the Roman Empire’s most luxurious baths. I’m not entirely sure my journey from London warranted the ‘Jet Lag Ritual’ — but I certainly wasn’t complaining.
Breakfast is always the thing I miss most when I return home and that was never more true than here. Choose from a buffet featuring every baked good imaginable and all the best Italian delicacies, or order from the menu, including my new favourite, the carbonara omelette.
I heard very good things about the Technogym, although I was occupied by the rooftop pool, its panoramic views across Rome and the important boots-on-the-ground journalism of admiring classic Italian cars.
Starting rates at the hotel are from £480 per night.
There was also the wonderfully charismatic Texan Billy Hibbs, who arrived with what might have been one of the most extraordinary stories of the weekend: a 1959 Maserati 3500 GT Vignale Spider prototype restored over three painstaking years by teams in Modena — in some cases by the children and grandchildren of the original craftsmen who built it.
Billy spoke about the car with infectious enthusiasm, diving happily into details about twin-cam engines, semaphore flags hidden in the interior and Maserati’s financial troubles in the 1950s that inadvertently led to the creation of the Spyder. ‘I’m not like my friends, I don’t hunt or fish or play golf,’ he grinned. ‘I do cars.’
His first was a 1970 Chevelle 396, bought from a dusty Texas used-car lot when he was 16 years old, and which he immediately began drag racing. He told me had to hide the trophies from his parents.
Billy Hibbs receives his award for winning CLASSE X — 1959 Maserati 3500 GT Vignale Spider.
And then there was the outright star of the show: the 1932 Maserati V4 Sport Zagato, which claimed Best in Show.
The pre-war Maserati is powered by a monstrous experimental 16-cylinder engine, which is essentially two 8-cylinder engines welded together. It once held the world speed record and survived the Second World War disassembled in a Dutch bedroom, its owner hiding the engine from invading forces.
The 1932 Maserati V4 Sport Zagato, winner of the pre-war Zagato class, arrives before the crowds at Anantara Concorso Roma.
Originally owned by a physician to the Pope and raced at the Rome Grand Prix, the car had returned to the city for the first time in 94 years. ‘It belongs back in Rome,’ its caretaker Joe Colasacco told me. ‘It’s a Roman car.’
And that was perhaps the most magical part about the entire weekend. So many of these cars were returning to Italy — and to Rome specifically — for the first time in decades. Some had not returned since they originally left the country. They weren’t just beautiful cars, but fragments of Italian cultural history returning home, even if only temporarily.
Of course, the concorsa itself was only part of the experience. The hospitality was unapologetically extravagant in the very best Italian way. There were rooftop cocktails at Anantara Palazzo Naiadi Rome Hotel, endless pastries at breakfast, al fresco trattoria-style dinners beneath fairy lights at Casina Valadier and a finale celebration inside the spectacular Palazzo Brancaccio, complete with opera performances and women in gowns playing classical favourites.
At one point, I found myself hurtling past some of Rome’s most famous historical and cultural sites in the sidecar of a classic Vespa driven by a complete stranger — which, given Roman traffic, felt like an extraordinary act of trust. Out there on the internet, I must be hurtling past in the background of hundreds of videos of the Colosseum, the Pantheon and the vine-draped streets of Trastevere.
The sidecar in question.
Anantara Concorso Roma understood that cars — particularly Italian cars — aren’t just about engineering. They are about romance, beauty, memory, absurdity and emotion. And in a city already overflowing with all of those things, they made perfect sense.
