I've been to Rome many times before, this apartment was a disaster. Extremely disappointing.
The host writes check in anytime after 3pm but made sure to rush us to meet her dad at 6pm SHARP only to make us wait for 30min outside. Upon arrival he requested a photo of our passports stating it's part of Italian security procedure. To assure us he showed pictures of passports of previous guests that he stores in his phone. (Seems messed up that a private citizen has a collection of passport photos).
The apartment itself is dark, dusty and claustrophobic and WIFI barely works. Bathroom is tiny, photos are photoshopped to be brighter and are misleading. Smell of mold in the bathroom and sewage outside when you open the window. Floors creak, and if you're over 5' 11" you will be crouching (but this was in her description).
Main issue: On the first night, after going to bed we discovered that the mattress sinks deeply in the middle of the bed. We lifted the mattress and found that the bed is broken. The supporting planks create a concave in the middle, and some of them were completely missing. In the morning we reached out to Melany, we only got a response back in the afternoon saying she will contact a "special technician" in two days (our last day). We again told her that we suffered from backaches as a result of this broken bed, and suggested an easy solution to lay down one thick wooden board under the mattress. While we were out her father laid down 2 narrow .25" thick plywood sheets that did nothing to fix the concave.
Bottom line: This apartment is not worth it's fee at all, and we think selling you a broken bed and then not fixing the problem is wrong. The whole passport request still seems shady coming from a private citizen. Better to stay at a 3 star hotel. We sent the photos of the broken bed to Airbnb to file a complaint.
As far as we know the next guests were sleeping in the same situation because when we left they still didn't fix the bed.