I had the occassion to stay at the Grand Palatino on 2 different occassions in May. I spend 6 months out of the year staying in hotels so I have a good base to judge. The customer service at the front desk was non-existent. There is no warm italian hospitality but rather a front desk staff with a serious attitude problem. They appeared very bothered if you asked them a question and even fought with me about several small items.
I booked 2 different room types and they are vastly different. The executive rooms are on the top floor and they are very nice with turn down service, bathrobes and chocolates on your pillow. There is still car noise from the street but not too bad given the quality of the room. The standard rooms don't look so good and the new style rooms are nice but some are on the first floor literally on the street (no turn down service, no bathrobes) but the double paned windows are nice.
As much as I liked the executive level rooms I don't think it's worth it given how unaccomodating the staff are. OH, beware, 8 euro for wireless internet access! Yikes.

Stayed at this hotel for 3 nights in April, 2009. Within walking distance to St. Peters in Chains church, Coloseum, Forum & Capital building. Had dinner one night at the hotel - very good pork roast. Had a room on the street side of the hotel. Since it was only April, the air conditioning was not yet turned on and it was quite warm, so we opened our windows to cool the room off. The street below was VERY noisy with the window open. Small refrigerator in the room. Comfortable beds, plenty of pillows & towels. No ice machine, so you had to get a small bucket of ice from the bar below. Be sure to insert your room key into the small box on the wall when you walk in - this ensures that the electricity will operate in the room.

Would recommend da Robertino's restaurant within walking distance to the hotel - they did not have an English menu at the time, but the waitress spoke English and was very helpful with our selections - try the Roman artichokes! We sat outside in a semi enclosed area which was very pleasant and all of the ladies receive a rose at the end of dinner.

Be sure to go up on the roof at sunset, you can get a nice view of the capitol building.

Nice hotel with a great location in Rome---walking distance to metro, Colosseum and Forum. Breakfast nothing special but had lots of options. Do not eat at the restaurant next door; overpriced with mediocre food. There was an excellent family run restaurant on the street behind the hotel, just adjacent to the metro entrance with reasonable prices. The house wine was delicious and only 1 euro! I would definately stay here again if I return to Rome.

My husband and I decided to plan a trip to Rome and do it "on our on". We didn't want to be locked into a tour group so I researched hotels on Trip Advisor and in the Frommer Day by Day books. I discovered this hotel on the trip advisor website. I knew I wanted something that was close to the Colosseum because that was one of the main attractions that I wanted to see. This hotel is a five minute walk to the Colosseum and is in a great overall location. We walked to pretty much everything from here except the Vatican but we did end up walking back From the Vatican. Believe me we walked the entire city except the area near the Spanish Steps as the last 2 days of our trip were to be spent there at a different hotel.

The hotel itself was quite nice. I had booked a stand room with a double bed on the hotel website but I had put in a special request for a complimentary upgrade if possible because we were celebrating our 20 year anniversary. The hotel arranged our transport from the airport to the hotel. When we arrived our room was not ready but after waiting maybe 15 minutes the desk clerk said he was upgrading us to a Junior Suite. This was really nice. It had an amazing bathroom and the room itself was quite large with a king size bed, table and chairs, lounging sofa, tv, safe. Our room came with a breakfast daily. They had two breakfast areas. One was for tour bus patons and the other was for people who had booked on their own. The food was actually quite good and there were many selections. There were the typical deli type meats and cheeses, scrambled eggs, bacon (that was a little too limp for my taste) numerous pastries, yogurt, juices, coffee. The staff in the breakfast area were a little snobby some days but we just overlooked that and didn't have a problem. They always supplied you with whatever you requested. We are a very good breakfast and then either no lunch or split a small sandwich for lunch and would have a nice supper. I would definitely recommend this hotel and would stay here again if I came back to the area.