City edition
Where to stay in Rome
Rome is the one city in this Collection where the apartment is the exception and the palazzo suite is the rule. Every entry ends in the address’s own contact, at the address’s own price.
Portrait Roma
Above Via Condotti, steps from Piazza di Spagna
All-suite residence
14 suites, 33 to 190 m² (355 to 2,045 sq ft)
The nightly rate is not published; ask the address.
Palazzo Ripetta
Via di Ripetta, 200 m from Piazza del Popolo
Palazzo hotel with apartment category
78 rooms and suites, 24 to 67 m² (up to 721 sq ft)
The nightly rate is not published; ask the address.
Hotel de la Ville
Via Sistina, at the top of the Spanish Steps
Hotel with residence-sized suites
Suites from 84 up to 358 m² (904 to 3,853 sq ft)
The nightly rate is not published; ask the address.
Staying in Rome
The historic centre of Rome is small and almost entirely walkable, and it is bounded by the Tiber on one side and the Via del Corso through the middle. Everything a visitor wants — the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain — is inside a triangle you can cross in twenty-five minutes on foot. What you are choosing is not a district so much as which edge of that triangle you sleep on.
Be warned about one thing before you compare addresses: the pure serviced residence barely exists here. Where London has whole buildings built for stays of a month, Rome gives you the large suites of grand houses, and most of them have no kitchen at all. Ask the question directly and by category name, because a suite of 145 square metres with three terraces may still have nothing but a minibar. Every entry in this edition says which it is.
Where to sleep, and what it means
- Around Piazza di Spagna and Via Condotti
- The shopping streets and the Spanish Steps, at the northern edge of the centre. Loud by day, quiet after nine, and the easiest quarter to walk out of in any direction. Where the best addresses are.
- Via di Ripetta and Piazza del Popolo
- Along the Tiber at the top of the centre. Ten minutes from the shops and two from the river walk, with fewer coaches and more Romans. Good for a stay of weeks.
- The Pantheon and Piazza Navona
- The medieval tangle in the middle. Beautiful, and the busiest pavements in the city from ten to six — choose a courtyard room, never a street one.
- Monti and Via Sistina, above the steps
- The hill above the centre. You walk down to everything and take the steps or the lift back up, and it is markedly calmer for it.
What a visitor asks first
- Will my suite have a kitchen?
- Usually not, and this is the question that decides a long stay in Rome. Only a handful of categories in the whole centre include one, and they are named for it — a Luxury Apartment, a suite with a kitchenette. Ask by category name and get the answer in writing before you pay for a month.
- Which airport, and how do I get in?
- Fiumicino for long-haul and for anything from the Gulf or the Americas; the Leonardo Express runs to Termini in thirty-two minutes and is faster than a car in the evening. Ciampino is the low-cost airport and further out than it looks. From Termini take a taxi to the centre, not the metro, with luggage.
- When is Rome worth avoiding?
- July and August are genuinely hot, above thirty degrees for weeks, and many of the restaurants Romans eat in close in mid-August. April, May, September and October are the months, and they are also the full ones — book a long stay three months out for those.
The next city, before anyone else
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