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The UW Rome Center has served generations of students, offering some of their most valuable and personally transformative experiences at the University of Washington. Experiencing Rome with Palazzo Pio as a home-away-from-home is a unique and life-changing opportunity for students.

Colorful ceiling fresco above a room with white walls and a window overlooking a street in Rome — Restored ceiling fresco

In 2023, we completed five years of renovations that were designed to equip the historic palazzo with the latest in teaching and learning resources, while protecting its priceless historical legacy. Our space, which means so much to the UW Rome Center community, has been beautifully revived and enhanced with critical updates to the structure; electrical and mechanical works; important fire safety prevention measures; as well as new lighting, flooring and educational technology.

The renovations maximized our educational space and now promises to ensure, for generations to come, transformative global experiences for students and one-of-a-kind teaching and research opportunities for faculty. The improvements to our classrooms and learning spaces guarantee that faculty may continue to create and students may continue to experience innovative and transformational global teaching and research.

Group photo in front of the Colosseum — UW students visiting the Colosseum

Looking ahead, the UW Rome Center urgently needs your support to provide scholarships for the next – and increasingly diverse – generation of UW students in order to expand access to learning opportunities at the UW Rome Center.

With your support, the UW Rome Center is projected to host approximately 500 students in 2024.

A home-base in Rome

The first time Annabel Cholico stepped off of a plane, she felt like she was in an Italian movie. Annabel, a UW junior, was on her way to the UW Rome Center for a trip that would change her outlook on learning and life.

“I remember as we were driving down the cobblestone roads I would turn back just to see the road behind me. Everything about it fascinated me,” she says. “I had only seen Rome in the movies and in books. It wasn’t something that I thought that I would be able to experience. It just felt like I was a character in books that I had read.”

Having a UW home base in Campo de’ Fiori was very meaningful to Annabel’s experience. “The UW Rome Center had a big impact on me because it is located in a plaza where you can see and feel life happening before you.”