08.04.2026

Why Anantara Concorso Roma 2026 is the return of civilised motoring culture

The Anantara Concorso Roma returns to the Eternal City for the first time since 1960, gathering seventy historic Italian automobiles.

Words: Raja Amer, Motoring Editor

Photos courtesy of Minor Group Hotels.

 

What is it about Rome that stays with you long after you've left?

I've asked myself this more than once. Most recently when news of the Anantara Concorso Roma landed on GC's desk and sent me, without warning, straight back to a piazza somewhere between the Pantheon and nowhere in particular. Me and wife spent part of our honeymoon there, and I remember that particular silence Rome carries even in its noise. A silence that says: we were here long before you arrived, and we will be here long after. No city wears its history more gracefully. None makes you feel, quite so effortlessly, that you are a guest in something much larger than yourself.

It is precisely that Rome forms the backdrop for what may be the most compelling automotive gathering of 2026.

On 16 - 19 April, Anantara Hotels & Resorts unveils the inaugural Anantara Concorso Roma. Seventy historic Italian automobiles. Four days. One Eternal City. And for the first time since 1960, Rome hosts a concorso worthy of its own name.

You don't attend a concorso to be seen. You attend to recognise.

There is a meaningful difference. To be seen is to perform. To recognise is to understand, and understanding, in the world of the concorso, is earned slowly. It lives in the curve of coachwork shaped by hand, in the particular patina of aluminium that has outlived the men who formed it. A 1955 Ferrari 375 MM Coupé Speciale does not ask for your approval. A 1932 Maserati V4 Sport Spider Zagato does not compete for attention. They simply exist with the quiet authority of things built to last.

This is the register that separates the concorso from the motor show, the curated from the commercial. No launch campaigns. No lifestyle activations. Just Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, represented not by their newest chapters, but their most defining ones. Each car less a possession, more a custody. Each custodian a temporary steward of something that belongs, in some deeper sense, to time itself.

Presented by UBS, with Richard Mille and Sanlorenzo among its supporters, the event sits naturally within an ecosystem of cultivated taste, where mechanical precision and aesthetic obsession occupy the same sentence without irony.

That the concorso was postponed in 2025 and returns this year not diminished but expanded feels entirely Roman. The city has never been in a hurry. It understands that the things worth having are worth waiting for, and that a gathering of this character draws its meaning not from timeliness, but from intention.

La Dolce Vita delle Automobili. Not a tagline. A philosophy. One that Rome, of all cities, was always destined to host again.

The finest expressions of luxury do not announce themselves. They endure. And in Rome this April, in piazzas that have witnessed emperors and poets and everything in between, that endurance takes centre stage once more.

Eternal motoring culture indeed.

 

Website: anantaraconcorsoroma.com/

About the Contributor

YM Raja Amer, MBA

Raja Amer is a former Malaysia SBK Superbike racer who traded the track for the page, now serving as Motoring Editor at GC. With a throttle hand honed in MSBK competition, he brings insider perspective to his coverage of everything that moves with velocity and style. His passions span the spectrum of motorsport and design, from the sculptural Italian artistry of MV Agusta motorcycles to the cutting-edge technology of Formula 1 and the raw drama of MotoGP. Whether analyzing aerodynamics or aesthetics, Amir explores the intersection where engineering excellence meets timeless design.

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