Pineta Palace claims to be a 4 star hotel. The only 4 star thing about this place is the lobby. Photos of the rooms seen on hotels.com are a complete lie (or perhaps from a time when this hotel really was a 4 star one). This hotel is located in a residential area, down some very tight streets.
When my girlfriend and I got off the elevator, the hallway smelled stale and musky. To enter into our room, we had to use an old fashioned key attached to a lead miniature version of the hotel. It requires you to insert it into the door and twist about 5 times before the deadbolt releases. Once inside, the room was lacking. Light switches didn't work, the external A/C unit wouldn't turn on and the beds were two of the most solid things I've ever slept on. The carpet didn't seem to have been vacuumed in quite some time. The TV remote was sticky and the buttons on the TV itself did not work well; it is a TV from the early 90's at best. The hotel advertises that you can see the Vatican from their hotel...which it true, to a degree; indeed you can see it, if you look through a telephoto lens while leaning out of your balcony. Additionally, we left the "do not disturb sign" on our door when we left to go site seeing; when we returned, the staff had clearly entered and made the beds... a nice gesture, however, undesired. We had left our things out with the expectation that no one would be entering; this caused us to go through and make sure nothing was missing.
The hotel restaurant, located on the -1 floor, was okay. Not the most amazing food I've ever had, but not the worst. Service was very very slow. Some of the friends we were traveling with did end up getting food poisoning from this place though, so... be aware.
Overall, it was disappointing, disillusioning and disgusting. read more