Relais Uffizi, Tailor made Hotel

The best things about the hotel were its location and Lorenzo, the talented young cook who made breakfast. Lorenzo, you deserve better than this place. The rooms were extremely hot because the centralized AC had been switched to heat for fall. The weather was already warm, and opening the windows didn't help much: there were no mosquito nets, so mosquitoes filled the room and kept us awake all night. We were bitten several times, and my wife, who has allergies, woke up with pretty bad bumps. Our windows faced a street that the hotel didn't keep clean, with food scraps from garbage and bread fed to pigeons, which seemed to cause a lot of mosquitoes. The ceilings were so high that catching them at night was impossible. There was dust on our room when we returned in the afternoon. The black phone was covered in it. The older cleaner, who seemed unhappy, only made the bed and didn't change the sheets. On Saturday around 1 a.m., I told the person at the lobby I'd lost my card. He gave me a new one, but it wouldn't open the room. I went back down, and he asked for my room number. I asked how he'd set up the previous key and sent me upstairs without knowing the number. Nobody else was in the lobby, so he hadn't mixed me up with someone. He said it was my third card for that room and seemed to judge me for asking for another. He gave me a different card, and that one worked. Breakfast ended at 10 a.m. on Sunday, which seemed unusually early, so I rushed there just before closing. Once it passed 10, the staff became unfriendly and opened the front window, creating a draft. Our 65-year-old father got sick, and since all of us had just showered, we all felt a bit sick too. When we asked for an espresso at the end, the staff gave us a very hard look. We said breakfast should at least run until 11 on Saturdays and Sundays. They said it was policy. Policies can be wrong.

The old-fashioned wardrobe key was a tiny detail, but my child absolutely loved turning it to unlock the door. It made our stay feel like stepping into a storybook. The room was small yet cozy and beautifully styled, with classic touches in the furniture and bathroom. Sculptures by the front desk and timeless decor gave the whole place a special, almost dreamlike feel, like historic Florence from another era. The hotel is tucked on a tiny, easy-to-miss street, just steps from the central square, shops, and restaurants. We had trouble finding it at first, but that hidden-away feel became part of its charm. It's small and intimate, and the moment I walked in, I felt transported to old-world Europe. This is a hotel I’ll carry in my heart, and I can’t recommend it enough if you want to feel Florence’s beauty, charm, and history.

I spent five days here, choosing the more expensive Jr Suite because I needed extra room to work. The rooms are lovely, but I wouldn't recommend staying here. The air conditioning never worked properly. I told the staff on day one that it was too warm, and though they kept saying they'd fix it, the room got hotter each day. On the last night it reached 80 degrees. I said I couldn't sleep there, so they put me in a much smaller room for the night, where the air conditioning did work. The shower head also broke, and the cleaning wasn't thorough, they even left a dirty sponge on the floor. I might have overlooked those issues if the AC had worked. I paid for air conditioning and didn't get it, and the hotel offered no discount for the inconvenience, which I found especially troubling.

The location is good, but the management ruined our stay, and I wouldn't recommend the hotel. We booked two rooms, a Superior for our daughter and a Deluxe for my husband and me. At check-in, only one was ready, and the man asked us to put our things there without saying which room it was. I kept explaining that we wanted the bigger, better room, the Deluxe, but he said the rooms were basically the same. My husband was sick, so we stayed in the one that was ready. Our daughter's room wasn't cleaned and ready until two hours after check-in. Once she unpacked, I saw it was the Deluxe, and it was clearly better: a king bed instead of a queen, a bathtub as well as a shower, a bigger bathroom, and a couch. I don't understand why reception said there was little difference. When I called the front desk later with a request, nobody picked up despite five minutes of ringing. I went down and found no one there, no sign saying when they'd return or how to reach them. I waited ten minutes before someone came back. I've traveled a lot and never had that happen at a hotel. They also lost my daughter's pajama pants through their laundry service. They did nothing until we made a big deal of it, then gave us 17 Euros in credit, which wasn't enough to replace the pajamas in Florence. There never seemed to be a manager on site, and reception staff didn't know how to handle problems. They seemed inept and never apologized for the unready room, the misleading description of the two rooms, or the lost clothes. You can find a better place to stay in Florence.