Villa Tortorelli

The room and hotel were beautiful. Florence in July is so hot that having access to a pool is a must. The breakfast was great, and the staff very helpful and kind. The property is recessed from a main road so very quiet and peaceful.

The building is a converted villa, set back within courtyards. It’s an interesting traditional design. The pool area is a pleasant place to relax after sightseeing. Staff are there up to 3pm and are friendly and welcoming.

You need your wits about you to get into the place on arrival as there are no staff from when you can arrive from 3pm. There are multiple codes to find from an email sent the night before, to open the doors. You would need mobile data to access that on your phone as the wifi code is inside and you are outside. Not everyone is digitally savvy, and the check in process complex. Once in, your key set is in the room and it’s got about 5 different keys for various things and cryptic labels on the key fobs. Some better explained information within the rooms would be a simple improvement to help guests understand this. Our room didn’t have much natural light despite it having a terrace outside. The sun never shone into the terrace due to the tall buildings around it, so it was sort of redundant. There is quite a lot of signage in the outside spaces telling you the rules etc and they were quite aggressively worded. You will be fined if seen doing x or y, you must wear a swimming hat in the pool, and we have CCTV watching you etc. The rules should be communicated better within the rooms and on the booking platform (who thinks to brings a swimming hat on holiday!), and in a ‘softer’ English translation

The room was nice

That I did not know who I was checking in with. I never spoke to a real person.

Location was great and staff at the property were friendly and helpful

We booked a room with a terrace that online looked bright and fresh. On arrival I was disappointed to find the room (#2) lacked natural light and was very, very dark. During the day we had to use the room lights which were over -bright and harsh and as a result of this the room did not feel warm or inviting at all. The terrace and bathroom were very tired and overall so were the parts of the property we saw - for the price - the room was disappointing. I did request a room move and understandably in high season this could not be arranged - so 3 days felt a long time in a room we did not like or feel comfortable in at all.