We were helped to the apartment by Lorenzo, Valentina's brother, who showed us round and made sure we felt at home. Even before this though Valentina had kept in touch with us to ensure she had everything prepared for us, which gave us a great deal of confidence in the place even before we arrived.
The apartment is a 1 bed studio but its the kind of place you imagine real inhabitants live when you see movies based in Rome.
The photo's don't really do the place justice as the main selling point is the superb location. Just out the door and round the corner is a view of the Colloseum - and when I say view I mean view, not some speck in the distance. Down the other end of the street is an excavation of another ruin and across from that you can see the Palazzo Venezia.
More locally though, at the actual end of the street is a fountain where all the locals sit with drinks and socialise, the atmosphere was amazing and was something you could never experience anywhere but there. We were also surrounded by cosy little restaurants where the food standard was generally much better than the main tourist spots in Rome. In particular we ended up at 'Antica Trattoria a Monto Srl' twice and would highly recommend it.
We had never used AirBnB before but after this experience we will gladly use from now on. Particularly we would hope to return to this apartment some day as I don't think we could find one better that would suit our purpose in Rome.
All in all we had a great holiday. Thank you Valentina and Lorenzo for the part you played in that.