Personally, staying at Giovanni's place was a highlight to my visits to Zurich, Germany, Poland and Rome.
Being able to walk outside the door and take a few steps to Galileo's museum and having history around every corner was awesome.
On top of all that, on my last day, I created an issue with accidentally breaking a door key which I envisioned this consuming the rest of my last day there. Giovanni and his brother where there within 10 minutes and I was on my way. Things just happened to work out for other reasons (the other half of the key didn't stick in the door) but if they hadn't had been so quick to respond and be helpful I would have missed out on a lot.
You might want to read some of the other comments about things like there being a lot of stairs but the
bottom line, I loved staying there!!!!
Brad