The newest bar in Rome is also an art installation that will take your breath away

To live a mezz’aria, halfway between earth and sky, to be nothing more than a silent observer of eternal walls, to lose track of time under the Roman sun, to surrender to feelings, to believe in the unimaginable, to grasp the unattainable. There were moments when I was deeply and almost delusionally convinced that Rome was my destined city (that sparkling idea, in fact, never fully faded). No matter how many times I visited, there was always a new list of unfulfilled wishes, new monumental palaces, museums, piazzas, and markets to explore, because this is a city that continuously reveals itself. One of these places – the perfect reason for a Roman trip – is the newly opened Bar Far, which is also a kind of art installation created by sculptor Clementine Keith-Roach and painter Christopher Page. What is it actually about?

In Villa Lontana in Trastevere, in collaboration with Studio Strato, Clementine and Christopher created an imaginary gesamtkunstwerk in the style of ancient and Baroque Rome. Bar Far is inspired by historical art bars: Cabaret Voltaire, the Colony Room, and Christopher’s favorite spot, Caffè Greco in Rome, which functioned as both bars and artistic stages. Such places often emerged during times of political upheaval and offered space for experimentation and conversation – exactly what we need today.

Like our dreams, Bar Far condenses paradoxical layers, ancient Roman and Baroque splendor collide with contemporary architecture and the deceptive lure of the future (just look at that bright red color). According to Clementine and Christopher, the result is a space that is at once a church and a tomb, a prophecy and a ruin, heaven and hell. While its plaster reliefs dramatize the building itself: body parts emerge from the walls and merge with construction materials – brick, pipes, wood, functioning not only as decoration but also as structural elements, like infrastructural caryatids, its red wall painting transforms the room into an illusory column or cloister, although it does not face a heavenly landscape, but a menacing infinity that draws us in with an ambiguous, otherworldly glow.

In Bar Far, the boundaries of art dissolve – sculpture merges with architecture, painting seems to vanish, and trompe l’oeil tricks confuse our sense of what is made of what. This is just one of many collaborative works by this noted artistic duo, who consistently raise questions about the destruction of old worlds and the possibility of new ones emerging from the ruins. As once-stable global orders vanish before our eyes, Bar Far offers a playful space for reflection – you know, when you finally gather with friends on a Friday night, but the conversation suddenly slips into political debates, discussions of existential and philosophical issues, metaphysical paradoxes, and contradictions… this is the place for all those debates, where answers are often found, well, at the bottom of a glass.

Photo: Jasper Fry

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that this dreamlike space was opened with a program of live performances in December last year (poet Florence Uniacke and artist and soprano Nyla van Ingen are just some of the participants selected by curator Vittoria Bonifati), and it will remain open until March 14, 2026. See you in Rome!