Let me first start with the good. The location's pretty amazing (although it's in a VERY upscale neighborhood where the food and shopping are all extremely expensive and it's virtually impossible to find a sit-down restaurant, as everything is takeout only). It's about a 20 minute walk to the Vatican, a 5 minute walk to a supermarket, and less than a 10 minute walk to public transit. The apartment was also meticulously clean--we were very impressed with that. It's also a great value for having three full master suites: each bedroom had its own bathroom and shower. And the place had a lot of character--it was pleasantly quirky and aesthetically pleasing. Unfortunately, this is where the good ends.
Now for the not-so-good (and one extremely bad). First, check-in was very difficult. Despite living in the same building as the rental, Anna kept texting us asking for an EXACT time of arrival. Since we don't know Rome traffic, we couldn't give her one; the best we could do was a window of about an hour, and the time the train was arriving in the station. We tried calling multiple times, but the number on their listing was never answered. We ended up standing outside waiting, and eventually were let in because the husband was walking his dog and spotted us. He could only let us in to the building, though, not the apartment, so he called Anna, who wasn't home yet, and we waited some more for her to arrive.
She was nice, but seemed to be in a hurry, and sort of just waved us at a table with brochures and maps rather than make specific recommendations. (Those papers were helpful, but also very out of date, and many were only in Italian.) About five minutes after she left, she let herself back into the apartment without knocking because she'd forgotten something--this struck us as odd and inappropriate but not outrageously so, since it'd only been a few minutes. The MUCH bigger problem was when, later in our stay, she let herself into the apartment again to drop something off. There was less than no excuse for this--it was a horrible invasion of privacy and, considering that they literally lived upstairs, there was ZERO reason they couldn't store whatever it was in their own apartment until we'd checked out. For this reason alone I'd never stay at another property owned by Anna.
The listing states more than once that the apartment is quiet. This is so far past exaggeration that it moves into outright lie. The walls and ceilings are very thin. You can hear EVERYTHING the neighbors do, at all hours of the day and night. We slept with earplugs, and even then it wasn't always enough, as at one point there was an entire choral group singing Disney music at the top of their lungs after midnight.
There's also no place for a group to congregate comfortably. In fact there's no relaxing seating in the apartment at all. There's a small eating area where seating for eight or ten and the information table take up all the available space, except for an old church pew that we all wished was a couch instead, and that's the only group space in the place. There's no couch or lounge chair anywhere in the entire apartment. The TVs are tiny and in the individual bedrooms; if you took a group of eight and all wanted to watch a movie together after a day of sightseeing, you're out of luck.
Also please note that while there is a coffee maker, the coffe pods aren't included in the price of the rental. And while there is definitely room for eight in this apartment, there isn't SERVICE for eight because there's very little silverware in the apartment.
One of the toilets, when flushed, made an ungodly noise that could be heard through three shut doors and would come and go for upwards of an hour. We informed Anna of this but she dismissed the concern because it wasn't leaking. It's an old building and we expect creaky pipes, but this noise literally startled us awake at night more than once, so I hope she gets it fixed, whatever it is.
And speaking of bathrooms, two of the three showers had no shelving or rack space at all, so there was no place to even put a bar of soap down. (We all ended up using the one shower with the $5 shelving unit hanging from it; it'd be a tiny investment to get two more and would make a huge difference.) Compounding that problem, the showers are literally so small you can't actually bend over in them, which means you can't put your shampoo on the floor, either.
So all told, I know this looks like an overwhelmingly negative review, and honestly, we did complain a lot while we were there and would not stay there again if we could find another place with such a good location for such an affordable price. That's a big IF, though, and you generally do get what you pay for, so for the budget-minded traveler who does not mind all the noise and inconvenience and invasion of privacy, this honestly isn't a bad option. It is, after all, big, clean, quirky, and well located.