While waiting to be able to enter the apartment I had rented in Rome (located near Campo dei Fiori), I had to find a hotel for one night, did so last minute by internet (Venere) and wound up here, at some distance that is from where I rented. The Accademia is a fine hotel really, and is called so because of its address, Piazza Dell’Accademia di San Luca, which is a very small square - more of a triangle really - just off the Via del Tritone, where there is a busstop almost right at your doorstep, number 175. The Via del Tritone connects Piazza Barberini with the Via del Corso, if that means anything to you. Roman busses at rush hour – and at any other hour - are sheer tragedy, so I took a taxi from Termini and paid 8 euros. I had a good room (luxury level though, it seemed), streetside but quiet, with a very modern bathroom for which I paid 150 instead of the normal 200. It wasn’t very large, but adequate and clean. Service at the desk was friendly, but it might have helped that I speak Italian. Breakfast next morning was okay, especially if you consider the normal appalling level of breakfast in Italy. The hotel advertises itself as a three star, and they are right. And yes, 200 would be expensive, even for Rome.
The only thing I didn’t like about the hotel – but for which it is praised by many on this site – is the location. And I suppose that accounts for the price. I myself would never willingly accept a hotel location so near to the Trevi fountain. It means that hordes of people will be passing by from dawn till nightfall, and that, if you buy a cappuccino on a terrace at the Via del Tritone, you pay 5 euros. Two days later, on a terrace at the Via Merulana, I paid 1.50. At Campo dei Fiori you will pay 3. The area around Trevi is heavily tourist infested, noisy, full of cheap shops and (mostly) bad restaurants, where no decent Italian would ever care to sit down. Like the area around the Spanish steps it is a circus. People who live there are complaining for years now about the mess that is made by – especially – younger visitors. Apart from the heavy tourist traffic in the direction of the Trevi fountain, I have always found the area around the Via del Tritone dull.
If you want to be chic, choose Via Veneto, if you prefer oldfashioned Italian charm, choose the area behind Via Arenula and the Tiber, or the area between Navona and the Tiber, or settle for Trastevere, which is lovely too. You won’t avoid the tourists there either, and you never will in Rome, but it is much nicer and much more Italian. And if you ‘d like to stay for a week or longer, rent an apartment. But, like I said, with the Accademia there ’s nothing wrong.
