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Hotels Overview

It's the click of your heels on inlaid marble, the whisper of 600-count Frette sheets, the murmured "buongiorno" of a coat-tailed porter bowing low as you pass. It's a rustic attic room with wood-beam ceilings, a wrought-iron balcony for your morning cappuccino, a white umbrella on a roof terrace, a 400-year-old palazzo with Casanova's name in the guest book. Maybe it's the birdsong warbling into your room as you swing open French windows to a sun-kissed view of the Colosseum, a time-worn piazza, a flower-filled marketplace. Whatever your Roman holiday hotel fantasy, Audrey Hepburn couldn't have had it better. Dolce Vita, here you come.

If you're prepared to hock grandma's ring to finance your Roman hotel stay, keep dreaming. If not, read on.

Hotels in Rome are something like the Sistine Chapel: at the top, they're heaven, but at the lower end, they can feel more like purgatorio. Palatial settings, cloud-nine comfort, and high standards of service can be taken for granted in Rome's top establishments. But in other categories, especially moderate and inexpensive, standards vary considerably. That's a nice way of saying that very often, Rome's budget hotels are not up to the standards of space, comfort, quiet, and service that are taken for granted in the United States: think tiny rooms, lumpy beds, and anemic air-conditioning. Essentially you get what you pay for. Luxury hotels like the Eden, the Hassler, and the Hotel de Russie are justly renowned for sybaritic comfort: postcard views over Roman rooftops, white linen and silver at a groaning-table breakfast buffet, and the fluffiest, thirstiest, softest towels since cotton was king. Can you hear the angels singing? At the other end of the scale, many of the family-run pensions near Termini station and elsewhere suffer from too little space, too much noise, and chronic, some say fatal, lack of homeyness. For some travelers, tacky linens and linoleum floors are their own small circle of hell.

Happily, the good news is that if you're flexible there are happy mediums aplenty. The Abruzzi is cheap and spartan -- but has knockout views of the Pantheon. The Campo de' Fiori has no elevator and tiny rooms -- but a roof terrace where you'll want to spend the whole morning. The Panda is a walkup in a residential building, but a stone's throw from the Spanish Steps, and its little jewels of rooms are done up with frescoes and plaster statuary, a Roman fantasy in miniature.

Before you choose your hotel, prioritize. If a picturesque location is your main concern, stay in one of the small hotels around Piazza Navona or Campo de' Fiori. If luxury is, head for Via Veneto, where price-quality ratios are high and some hotels have swimming pools. Most of Rome's good budget hotels are concentrated around Termini train station, but you'll have to use public transportation to get to the historic part of town. There are obvious advantages to staying in a hotel within easy walking distance of the main sights, particularly because parts of downtown Rome are closed to traffic and are blessedly quieter than they once were. Here, no matter how inexpensive these lodgings may be, they give their guests one priceless perk: a sense of being in the heart of history.