Raffaele’s apartment is in a lovely district of Rome, full of bars, pastry shops and hairdressers. The building is guarded 6 days a week by a doorman, which feels very safe. The room I was staying is large, with a private bathroom and a desk I worked on. There is direct access to a big terrace with a nice view on Villa Blanc and its parc. A cleaning lady cleans the whole flat, including the rooms every two weeks.
The apartment is in an old status, and seems to have been left to a 80s/90s standard without great motivation toward substantial maintenance. For instance, the roller shutter in my room was broken, it could not be unrolled till the ground. I had to ask Raffaele three times to repair it, he repaired it in the end but I had to insist. The kitchen lacks a central light on the ceiling, so it is very unpleasant to cook in the evening because you do not literally see what you’re cooking. The table of the kitchen lies in what seems a sheltered terrace, the shelter must be from the 70s or 80s, very old, partially broken and most importantly does not isolate well from the air outside (draughts). This was bearable in the beginning of October, but by the end of the month it got very very cold in the kitchen in the morning and evening hours. The apartment is on the 6th floor, maybe due to this fact there is little pressure of the water in the private bathroom of the room I was in. It happened twice that the water heater got blocked and there was no hot water in the whole flat. Raffaele came and solved the problem. The apartment should have had a functioning washing machine, but it was not true. Raffaele brought a washing machine by the end of the month but we (clients in the flat) were not allowed to use it. He collected our dirty clothes and made a laundry in his apartment, where he kept a dog. In the end there was dog’s hair on my “clean” trousers.
The most serious problem is the inexistent heating. Rome is part of an Italian region where the heating can be turned on very late (21. November 2022) if centralized as in buildings with many flats. This means that when the cold whether comes, you have 15-16° outside and inside. This is a very cold temperature to live in a flat, even under the current “austerity” circumstances. Everyone (3 young women) was very very cold. Raffaele had no solution for that, he said we could not give us electric heaters because they would have caused a black out of electricity and at any rate the electricity bill had a high cost. In the room there is a machine for air conditioning, which might produce hot air too, but the remote was not in the room. When I called him to complain for the cold he responded that he did not have a solution and I should “put another pullover on”, when I already had 2. Such replies are simply inadequate and unacceptable toward a paying client with a very reasonable request.
Similar story for changing the towels: I once asked to have a change of towels after 7 or 10 days, because the towel I had stank due to the low quality of the material or the years it had. Raffaele replied that he would have changed the towels every 2 weeks. I had to insist and “argue” for the clean towel till he brought some clean ones. This is again unacceptable if we consider the average standards of hygiene and cleanness.
In general I found Raffaele very responsive and present, but his way of dealing with important issues such as the heating and the laundry really annoyed me.