Magic toys and where to find them

On several occasions, while telling the wonderful Navona Square in which we are located, we used the word “magic”. Of its atmospheres, of the Christmas market, of the literary or cinematographic stories that have found inspiration here and of the walks in History and Beauty that - inside and outside our eclusive mansion – become possible. So let’s complete this adventure, of discovery and wonder, with three places in which the age is only that of our imagination.

The ‘Dream’ of Navona Square
Faries and goblins, games and music boxes, toy soldiers and dragons, dolls and masks: a fairytale world, the one founded in 1945 by a mother and carried on by her daughter and nephews. The oldest place of toys in Rome, where the peluches - even giant ones - are still sewn by hand. Even because we are not talking just about a shop: ‘Al Sogno’ is in fact also a tiny museum. Born as a factory of cots and prams and which today sees in its collection a small rocking horse from 1780, made of papier-mâché and wood, toy trains from 1870, a Heubach doll (bisque type) from 1890 and a steam engine from 1907. What’s even more precious, ‘To the Dream’ is an “emergency room”. Where in many know they will find loving hands, capable of giving a new life to their toys.
In an era that quickly consumes everything, a different idea - the same one we intended to express at Eitch Borromini: that we are what we take care of. In our case, of a place that has rightfully entered the history of Art without time; in theirs, of the dream and fantasy through wich we grow up; for both, of people’s joy.

The ‘Empire of toys’
Imagining your walk from Eitch Borromini in Navona Square to Eitch Belsiana, very close to the Spanish Square, here is the second historic place: Hamleys, founded in 1760 in Cornwall and recently inaugurated in Corso Street, inside the beautiful Sordi Gallery. With a shop that extends over more than two levels, for more than one thousand three hundred square meters of toys and games. And, of course, with a welcome entrusted to the “Hamley family”: the Ringmaster, the Toy Soldier, the Rag Doll and Hamley and Hattie Bears. Dolls, trains, puppets and much more. Not just purchases, though: also a lot of creativity, from the constructions to the possibility of making one’s own plush bear. Because playing is a serious thing, which cannot be replaced by the smartphone…

The ‘City of the Sun’
Coming back from Corso Street, before returning to your room at Eitch cross the small square of the Pantheon in the direction of Saint Louis Church: on the other side of the Scrofa Street, a little diagonally from the Church, there is a smaller but equally loved place. Full of toys - and even books – for all ages and where the adults can’t wait to go up to the first floor, to explore board games and puzzles, Zen gardens and birdhouses, wooden toy constructions, brain teasers and microscopes.
As written by a visitor in a review, “the answer to the question ‘why shouldn’t I buy it on Internet’ is here, in this shop”. From which is almost impossible to leave empty-handed, precisely because every object is a reminder of the joy of doing - alone or together.

Magic wands at hand, find the Portkey to Rome and let the magic begin!