St. Stephens's School Rome
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Back to GatewaySt. Stephens's School Rome
There is no ordinary place to go to school. But there are extraordinary ones, and St. Stephen's, perched at the foot of the Aventine in the heart of one of the world's great cities, is among the most extraordinary I have encountered throughout my career in education.
I joined this community as Head of School in July 2026, with a deep sense of purpose. Not because St. Stephen's is a school with a remarkable past, though it is, but because I believe it is a school with an even more remarkable future. And because the young people who come here from across the globe to pursue their education deserve nothing less than our full commitment to that future, beginning now.
St. Stephen's has always understood something that the wider world of education is only beginning to catch up with: that learning is inseparable from living, and that where you are shapes who you become. Our campus on the Aventine, a stone's throw from Rome's great imperial sites, at the crossroads of European culture and history, is not simply a beautiful backdrop. It is an active part of our curriculum.
With three hundred students, we are intentionally small. Our sixty boarders form the nucleus of a family within a family. Our experiential education program takes learning out of the classroom and into the world. Our faculty are scholars, artists, writers, and scientists who bring genuine intellectual passion to their teaching every day. And our students, drawn from every corner of the world, bring with them the diversity of experience and perspective that makes education here unlike anywhere else.
This is a school built on two of the most rigorous academic traditions available to young people today: the American independent college-preparatory curriculum and the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. The founders of St. Stephen's, who established the school in 1964, understood that excellence in education is not a single tradition but a synthesis, and that synthesis remains at the heart of everything we do.
Mens, Voluntas, Gratia — Then and Now
The motto our founders chose in 1964 has lost none of its relevance. If anything, it speaks more urgently to the moment our students are entering than it did sixty years ago.
Mens: the ability to think critically, creatively, and scientifically, coupled with genuine intellectual curiosity, is the foundation of everything we ask of our students. In an age when information is everywhere and wisdom is rare, we are in the business of cultivating minds that can navigate complexity, question assumptions, and make meaning from noise.
Voluntas: the motivation to succeed and the potential to excel is not something we instill from the outside. It is something we believe every student carries within them, waiting to be met with the right challenge, the right teacher, the right moment of discovery. Our job is to create the conditions in which that potential can be realized.
Gratia: personal and social integrity, cooperation, concern for others, and commitment to community, both local and global, is perhaps the most urgent of the three. The world our students are inheriting will demand of them not only intelligence and drive, but also the capacity to act with wisdom, empathy, and ethical courage. St. Stephen's has always taken that responsibility seriously. We take it more seriously than ever.
The question I am asked most often by families considering St. Stephen's is some version of this: how are you preparing young people for a world that is changing faster than any of us can fully understand?
My answer is that we do it the same way good schools have always done it, by teaching students to think, not just to know. By building the habits of mind and the depth of character that allow a person to adapt, to lead, and to contribute, whatever the world looks like when they graduate. The tools change. The fundamentals do not.
What is new, and what I am deeply committed to exploring with our faculty and students, is the specific landscape of opportunity and challenge that this generation faces. Artificial intelligence is reshaping every field our students will enter. Global interconnection is deepening even as the world grows more complex. The skills that matter most–critical thinking, cross-cultural fluency, ethical reasoning, collaborative problem-solving– are precisely the skills that a St. Stephen's education has always been designed to develop. We are not behind this moment. We are built for it.
In the years ahead, I intend to work closely with our faculty, our students, and our families to ensure that St. Stephen's continues to evolve, deepening our academic program, strengthening our boarding community, and building the kind of school that not only prepares young people for the future but gives them the confidence and the character to shape it.
If you are a prospective family considering St. Stephen's, I invite you to look closely — not just at our academic results or our university destinations, but at who our students become during their time here. Look at the conversations they are capable of having, the questions they are willing to ask, the way they move through a world that is as complicated as it is beautiful. That is the truest measure of what we do.
Maria Nunes
Head of School
Watch our students talk about how these principles underpin the five core values of care, scholarship, independence, integrity, and creativity that we embrace and practice as a community everyday...
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