After booking 5 Air BnB's for this trip to Italy, I learned how hard it is to weed through all the promises and reviews to discover the truth about a place. My efforts worked really well for 4 of the 5 stays. All of them were wonderful, with great and very helpful hosts. This final apartment was not. In many ways, what we saw online was not what we got. But first, I'll give the pros:
-The apartment was relatively clean.
-The wi-fi worked fine.
-The neighborhood felt safe, and the location was convenient to the city center.
-Lots of good restaurants, a supermarket, and 3 cafes right outside the door for coffee and breakfast.
Now, the cons:
-Unreliable communication with the host, Helene, from the beginning and throughout our stay. Sometimes she would respond right away, and other times, she didn't respond at all. Example: For our departure day, we had arranged transfer to the airport. The night before, I texted to confirm. No reply. That morning, I texted again to make sure the driver was in fact coming. No reply. He did show up, but he apparently had been told an earlier time than we had. So he was annoyed and appeared about to leave without us when I saw him outside and went downstairs to meet him.
-We never met Helene. Plus our check-in was handled by a woman who spoke no English. She told us everything in Italian. There was one small sheet of paper with some instructions in English.
-Very few instructions given - in English or Italian - on the AC, the appliances, or the neighborhood.
-The promised air conditioning did not work well at all. Also no unit in the upstairs bedroom. The apartment was very hot for our entire stay.
-Many things felt worn out and poorly-maintained (stairs, mattresses, furniture, window handles, AC units).
-The upstairs bedroom/bath had some issues. One was mentioned in other reviews: the shower had no water pressure and was unusable. Another was that the ceiling was really low. (No one over 5'10" would be able to stand up straight in there.) Also no AC.
-We didn't watch any TV, but if we'd wanted to, there was only a single tiny one in the living room.
-Odd issue, but there were buzzer buttons under every light switch in every room (within a small child's reach). Hitting one on accident was startling, to say the least. No explanation given for what they were for, but we finally figured out that they must be to "buzz" people into the building. If you have young kids, keeping them from pushing the buzzers would be a challenge.
Bottom line: I'm sorry to say all of this, but I would not recommend this apartment or consider staying there again. I would also not recommend working with Helene. However, I might look for another place in the same neighborhood.