Mimmo Jodice's Mediterranean photographs exhibited at Rome's mixed-use hotel Palazzo Velabro

Palazzo Velabro, a mixed-use hotel in Rome that opened last spring, is hosting the exhibition "Il cielo è quasi tutto azzurro" featuring photographs by Mimmo Jodice (Naples, 1934), a master of 20th-century photography. Curated by Benedetta Spalletti, director of Galleria Vistamare, the show runs until the end of September and explores the cultural roots of the Mediterranean across Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, reflecting on memory, origins, and the persistence of the past. Jodice has used his camera as a meditative time machine since 1985, capturing ancient ruins, classical sculpture, and traces of extinct civilizations. The hotel, housed in an 18th-century building transformed in the 1960s by rationalist architect Luigi Moretti and now managed by LHM under CEO Cristina Paini, also contains a library curated by Maria Vittoria Baravelli, a cinema called piccolo cinema Velabro, and the restaurant Apicio 16. The library's photography collection includes works by Gabriele Basilico, Aurelio Amendola, Piero Gemelli, and Marisa Rastellini. The hall features works by Ettore Spalletti and Joseph Kosuth. Paini plans to replicate this culture-based hospitality model in Rome, Venice, or Milan.