Grand Hotel San Lorenzo

We got there Friday afternoon, and later that night the local nightlife brought loud music from a packed piazza. At least earplugs were provided with the room. Joy...!

Maria, Celeste and Benny really looked after me. They sorted out problems, booked tables and hotels, served breakfast, and gave me advice. The rooms were quiet, and the hotel was in good shape after a recent refresh. It’s right in the historic centre of Mantova. Breakfast was good and generous, and the rooftop terrace has great views, though it’s very hard for a hotel guest to get a table. There’s no restaurant, but with so many nearby osteria, I didn’t find that necessary. There was a brief issue with the air conditioner.

We loved staying here and would recommend the hotel. It’s stylish and clean, right in the city centre, and having private parking was really convenient. The staff were wonderful and very professional. Breakfast was international, with high-quality ingredients, and we liked the town a lot too. Hopefully we can come back soon.

The breakfast was okay, but there was nothing remotely worthy of four stars here. Mantova deserves better than this questionable place and its ignorant, arrogant staff. We spent one night here on our way home and were stunned by how indifferent and ignorant the employees were, especially in a country with high structural unemployment. The parking garage looked like it was built around 1910 and had never been updated. The advertised EV charger was the slowest possible kind, connected through at least two extension cords to what looked like a 1950s power socket. That seemed like a serious fire hazard, and I wondered whether the local Fire Brigade would shut the whole place down, assuming inspections are required. Staff asked for our car keys, which would have been fine if they hadn’t switched the charger to a neighboring Tesla at ten past midnight and then forgotten to lock our car again. Apparently they hadn’t heard of apps or other such innovations. They also charged EUR 3.60 to enter the old city’s traffic-limited zone, even though that charge doesn’t apply to electric or hybrid cars. The front desk employee looked at a screenshot from the official site and seemed neither to know nor care. When I mentioned the unlocked car, she said, “I don’t know, my shift ended at 11pm!” The rooms were small and dirty: there were used shower caps on a hanger, black hair in the shower, and mold around it. The air-conditioning worked fine, but it was on in only half the rooms, despite it being 33C/90F outside, perhaps not considered hot enough to turn on everywhere. The units switched off when their timers ran out at midnight, so you’d inevitably wake around 12:30am. That happened to coincide with my iPhone alert about the unlocked car. Maybe that saves €0.08 per client stay in total. There was plenty of other noise inside the building too, with all sorts of sounds at night. It seemed the fourth floor had been redecorated in the middle of the night, presumably by the employee who’d just returned from heroically unplugging and unlocking guests’ cars.