Hi all,

We are planning a trip to Rome this June, and are looking for a place close to the attractions and are totally overwhelmed by the number of choices. I've been through some past threads on Fodors, tripadvisor, etc, but it just adds to my dilemna .

We are looking to stay for 5 nights, and our budget is around US$175\night. We want to be close to the historic center and city center so that we dont have to walk a lot, and must be in a safe part of town. Apart from that, we dont need a fancy place - just clean, and a decent sized place.

Any suggestions !? Please help ! Thanks so much in advance.

With nicely well-defined criteria, such as you have listed, your decision may boil down to availability and how rigidly you want to stick to your budget.

I recommend use the availability finder on www.venere.com where you can restrict your looking to fairly narrow geographic groupings:

For example,

http://en.venere.com/hotels_rome/pantheon
http://en.venere.com/hotels_rome/trevi_fountain
http://en.venere.com/hotels_rome/navona

and

http://en.venere.com/hotels_rome/spanish_steps

...list a total of 91 hotels, but fewer than a dozen of those are under the 130-140 euro threshold you mention. So, with June not far away, it's going to boil down to availability on the dates you need versus whether you are willing to move up to the next tier, pricewise.

In your price range, I only know one of the candidate hotels personally - - San Silvestro. You might not think it meets the criteria &lt;&lt;a decent sized place&gt;&gt;. Nothing in this price range will be a &quot;big&quot; hotel. Some will have rooms that are fairly good size (say 3 by 4 meters or larger), though I can tell you from experience that a <i>single</i> at San Silvestro could be claustrophobically small (more like 3 by <b>2</b> meters!).

And if you find the price versus availability search frustrating, you might branch out to other areas (like Trastevere, just to name one example).

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Rex

I really like Hotel San Francesco - it's a 3-star charming hotel in the center of town with a great roof terrace. Great location and great price. http://www.eatsleepgo.com/Rome.html

www.hotelsanfrancesco.net

This is the actual website for the Hotel San Francesco. Which does indeed look like a nice place to stay in Trastevere.

Albergo Cesari !

You might check out Hotel Parlamento. We stayed there a few weeks ago. The location is very good: Via Condotti right near the Marcus Aurelius column, walking distance to all the central sites. They should also be in your price range.
http://www.hotelparlamento.it/

They have 3 rooftop rooms that open onto a terrace. We weren't able to get one because of construction. If the work is completed, those terrace rooms would be great. I wrote a review in my trip report:
http://tinyurl.com/nsanw

Oops.

The Parlamento is at Via del Corso, NOT Via Condotti.

Take a look at Hotel Apollo, http://www.romeby.com/apollorome/index.html a family run hotel that is very nice. It's about 4 blocks north of the Colosseum on Via di Serpenti. It has very nice rooftop breakfast room and one of the best breakfast speads.
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Seriously, bob... how long has it been since Albergo Cesari had rooms in June for $175 USD?

We stayed at Hotel Teatro di Pompeo,(www.hotelteatrodipompeo.it) in August. It is a one minute walk to the Campo de Fiori and 5 minutes to Piazza Navona. The location is excellent and we walked to all the sights except the Vatican - we took a bus there. Breakfast is included and is served in the basement of the building which is part of Pompey's theatre. Our room was 150 euros a night and included bathroom, AC, fridge and hairdryer. The staff were very pleasant and we thought the hotel excellent value for money.

Have stayed at both Parlamento &amp; San Francesco. San Francesco is a nicer hotel, and although I loved Trastevere it is a little bit out of the historic centre. There is a tram that runs from Trast. to close to the Pantheon though. Parlamento has a great location, and the staff were super during my stay.

While I agree about the San Francesco --very nice, interesting Trastevere location, huge &amp; great breakfast buffet and ditto on the little rooftop bar -- I'm not sure I would call the location central. But the streetcar was simple and convenient.

I always reccommend the Nicolas B&amp;B, which is certainly no undiscovered secret, but a nice B&amp;B near the Forum, in an old building on a busy loud street (via cavour) but very quiet and contemporary once inside. Melissa and Francois are super helpful:nicolasinn.com

You can't get more central than Pensione Suisse. It's on Via Gregoriana, which radiates off Piazza Trinita del Monte at the top of the Spanish Steps. It is close to everything. The rooms are simple but large. The place is spotlessly clean and has been owned by the same family (Swiss) since 1920. I've stayed there twice.

Hi Rex,

Responding to your post to Bob:

&quot;Seriously, bob... how long has it been since Albergo Cesari had rooms in June for $175 USD?&quot;

I have a double room booked for less than that at Albergo Cesari for June 29 through July 3.

Love the San Francesco as well. Even though the location isn't as central as other parts of Rome, Trastavere is an incredible neighborhood in its own right. We spent hours roaming around those streets. All the sights in Rome were walkable. We booked it for 3 nights in January for 135E/night.

Kane... glad to hear that promotional rates are being found by Fodorites anytime - - news like this always makes me happy to be wrong. The rate shown on Venere.com is 220 euro/night for a double or twin - - assuming dates in June can be found (as of right now; most are fully booked from my random survey of June dates, including your stay period of Jun 29-Jul 3).

What rate DID you get? and through what channel?

Rex,

As soon as I posted this information, I just knew someone would ask for more details. It almost feels like a breach of privacy (to the hotel) to explain how I was able to get the room rate.

However, I know how important it is for people to have information like this, so this is exactly what happened:

If anyone remembers from my prior posts, we are a family of 10 going to Italy; therefore, I need one double, and two quads at every location.

I started sending e-mails to my hotels of choice back in August, 2005 explaining my lodging needs for June-July 2006. Albergo Cesari responded with a room rate of 223 euro for a double 290 euro for a quad.

I responded back, and thanked them, but replied that the rate was too high for my budget.

About two weeks later, I received another e-mail (unsolicited) from the hotel, which split up the room rates between weekday and weekend prices. That made the average price per night drop down to 170 euro for a double at the end of June, beginning of July. They used the same formula for the quad rooms.

Granted, we are a party of 10, staying five nights, so that probably had a huge bearing on our room rate, plus the fact that I booked 10 months prior to arrival.

I couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome.

The additional information is useful - - but 170 euro is still... not even close... to &quot;less than that [$175 USD]&quot;, as you asserted in your post.

Makes me wonder why you challenged my question to bob...

I'm not trying to nitpick - - but when questioners here ask for a hotel that is &quot;reasonable&quot; - - we chastise them for not being more specific...

...and here we have someone being very specific, and they get recommendations that ignore the specific budget which they have stated!

I think we owe better answers than that to questioners who ask a budget-specific question. &quot;We&quot; accept it as a given that more expensive hotels do not necessarily provide a &quot;better&quot; experience in Europe... so, when somene asks about a $175 hotel in rome, I think we should tell them how to go about finding one - - and if it means their choices are going to be limited, let them know what tools might help them deal with the decision... pay more, look elsewhere, accept &quot;less&quot; (features, whatever)...

Okay, I'll take my licking on this one. Sorry.

Thanks all for the suggestions and help.

We've finally decided to stay at the Hotel Giuliana (http://www.hotelgiuliana.com). The location seems good and this has got very good reviews on Trip Advisor. There isnt a lot of mention of this on the Fodors' forums - will post our experiences with this upon our return.