Where to stay in Rome? [closed]

Question

Ok, TripAdvisor lists like 1500 hotels in Rome. We have no idea what area to stay in. We would like to be close to shopping and sites. We also don't want to stay in some expensive chain hotel. Something that says "Roman" and is affordable. Maybe I the 100 to 200 euros per night. We will be there in late November.

Any recommendations? Oh, it's just my wife, 8 year old son and me.

Answer 1

Your question is pretty open: close to shopping and sites and between 100 and 200 EUR per night is still vague in a place like Rome. If you are staying in a big city like Rome, the best thing you can do is to use a booking engine to find the hotel of your dreams.

I book my hotels through booking.com. It is quite straightforward to use and it provides you with everything you need:

• You can narrow down your search geographically, by selecting districts you are interested in. There is also a possibility select hotels via a (google) map.

• You can also narrow down your search results to a certain price range.

• There are reviews for each hotel. These reviews are written by people who have booked the hotel through the site, meaning that they have actually stayed there. The potential for fake reviews is thus significantly reduced, as compared to other sites, such as e.g. TripAdvisor.

Kayak.com has similar features, i.e. filtering by area an price. Rather than having its own review system, it relies on TripAdvisor for that.

Also note that in Europe chain hotels are not necessarily expensive. Note that a group like Accor has several brands, ranging from really budget to luxury.

Answer 2

Your question has taken me back to an incredibly pleasant trip to Rome which I had with my family (three people with a slightly older boy than your son) a few years ago in April.

We stayed in an extremely central place which I would recommend to you (Pensione Barrett), from which you can easily walk around Rome, which allows you to stumble into some of the ancient ruins, and which is rather a work of art of itself (both the rooms and the common areas are decorated with statues, for example). The downside of this is the fact that the hotel has a limited number of rooms, so you'd better reserve in advance. Although their site is (I'm afraid) only in Italian, I'm sure they also speak English. The price is within the bracket you have mentioned. P.S. I checked on TripAdvisor, and Pensione Barrett is mentioned as top 22nd address in Rome.

A very good alternative to Pensione Barrett is Residence del Bollo. I think that originally it was part of a religious building, it has now been converted to a set of small apartments, located very conveniently close to Piazza Navona, which would allow you to set your own timing to the walks around Rome. I know that sometimes they cater to groups of students (that's how I got in touch them), so again I suppose it might be useful to book in advance. The prices are normally quite reasonable, although at times they become incredibly steep, so once again you'd better check their site well in advance.

A different option to staying in hotels is to secure a room in a monastery. There are plenty of such institutions which provide accommodation at moderate price in interesting buildings which normally are located in central areas; I gather that they normally have restrictions as for times to access the building in the evening. Unfortunately, I don't remember any such address at present, but will try to come up with one.

Enjoy your visit!

Answer 3

I haven't been to Rome personally, but you can use Trip Advisor to find what you want reasonably easily. My approach is usually to:

1. Open the page with hotels in Rome
2. Click on Best Value - this will filter down the list to hotels with high rating at a good price (for that rating)
3. Then you look at the map at the right hand side and click the "Larger Map" button
4. Navigate the map to see the city centre / area you are interested in
5. When you click at individual hotels, you will get the rating and average price (which is a reasonable indication)
6. When you select a few interesting hotels, you can search for rooms for the specific dates.

I think it is better to use sites like Trip Advisor, which aggregate hundreads of reviews rather than rely on single advice from members of SE.