Hotels in Italy ★★★

• Booking.com - We have done extensive testing, and Booking.com is hands-down the single best booking engine, with by far the largest number of hotels (and other lodging options) in all price ranges.Partner
• Agoda.com - This booking engine, once just an Asia specialist, has recently rocketed to second-best all around the world.Partner
• HotelsCombined.com - An aggregator looks at the results of all the booking engines and presents the prices it finds at each side-by-side. It's a great concept (and works well for airfares), however in our tests the actual booking engines themselves often offered better deals on more properties.Partner
• Hostelz.com - A booking engine that specailizes in hostels and cheap hotels.Partner
• Hotels.com - Since Hotels.com absorbed its Venere.com sibling, it has been performing much better in Europe than it once did.Partner
• Priceline.com - Priceline not only offers decent deals on standard hotel bookings, but also "Express Deals" in which you only get to know the hotel's star rating and neighborhood before you pay for it—but the savings can be substantial (usually 18%–20%, though occasionally much higher).Partner
• Hotwire.com - Like its competition Priceline, Hotwire offers both straightforward hotel bookings as well as "Hot Rate" deals that save you 25%–65% on hotels that you book blindly, knowing only the neighborhood and star rating before booking (and paying) for it.Partner
• Residenzedepoca.it - An association devoted not only to highlighting accommodations of particular historical interest, but also banding together to preserve and promote Italy's artistic and historic patrimony (when you book at any member hotel, 10% of the proceeds to go promoting historical tourism).
• Localistorici.it - A constorium of historic hotels, restaurants, and caffès.

First of all, I have nothing against hotels. They are reliable, widespread throughout Italy, and you know what you're going to get (or at least you will once you read all about how typical Italian hotels operate, and how they differ from American ones).

However, hotels aren't the be-all and end-all of lodging options in Italy.They are usually among the more expensive options available, and yet are rarely the most fun or remarkable.

In fact, to ensure the most memorable trip, you might want to make them your fallback choice when it comes to looking for a place to stay for the night.

Put it this way:

• I've parked my RV in a campground with a million-dollar view over Florence and camped in a tent by the beach in Venice.
• I've rented an ancient damusso house on the island of Pantelleria where I made friends with the neighbors.
• I've rented apartments in Venice around the corner from St. Mark's Cathedral where I was soon recognized as a local at the area shops.
• I set up housekeeping in a rented prehistoric trullo in Apulia where I became the "local color" that the other tourists were taking pictures of.
• At an agriturismo (farm stay) in Piemonte I sat on a patio overlooking moonlit grape vines, sipping wine that had came from them and chatting with the vintner about the life of an Italian winemaker.
• At a B&B in Ferrara the owner lent me a free bike and told me about recently discovered frescoes in a nearby palazzo, a hidden garden I could bike to, and a convent where the nuns made delicious cookies—none of them mentioned in any guidebook or by the local tourist office.
• At the medeival monastery in Tuscany built on the site where St. Francis received the stigmata, I shared a dinner table with pilgrims and transcendental spiritualists, attended vespers with the monks, and tossed back shots of their homemade herbal liqueur alongside one of the friars at the monastery bar (no, really).
• Within an hour of meeting my Couchsurfing host in Rome, I was riding in his car to pick up a friend and take her to her surprise party at a Roman home (my arrival was an integral part of the ruse).
• At a rental room on a Sicilian island I was regaled with stories of the tuna fishing industry by the widow of the former tuna factory foreman.
• And at a residence hotel in Rome in 1993 I met my wife.

None of that ever happens at a hotel, no matter how friendly the staff.

And every single one of those experiences cost less than the local hotels.(Heck, the Couchsurfing was free).

Even if you follow my own standard advice and consider your lodging to be just the cheapest comfortable place you can find to lay your weary head for the night, if you could get a bed that's both cheaper and in a more interesting setting, why not go for it?

I'll leave that decision up to you. But to help you make it, on the pages in thsi section, you'll find more than two dozen of the most popular alternative accommodations in Italy, including resources on how to find them and book them.

You will notice that all hotels, B&Bs, and other lodgingds (as well as sights and restaurants) on this site have a ReidsItaly.com star designation from ☆☆☆ to ★★★.

This merely indicates that I feel these accommodations offer a little something that makes them special (or extra-special, or extra-extra special, etc.).

These star ratings are entirely based on personal opinion, and have nothing to do with the official Italian hotel ratings—which have more to do with quantifiable amenities such as minibars, and not the intangibles that make a hotel truly stand out, like a combination of great location, friendly owners, nice style, and low prices.

In general, a pricier place to stay has to impress me that it is worth the added expense.

This is why I give ★★★ to some (official) "two-star" hotels or B&Bs that happen to provide amazing value for the money—and similarly have ranked a few (official) "four-star" properties just (★★☆).

Accommodations rates vary wildly—even at the same hotel or B&B—depending on type of room, number of people in it, and the season.

That's why here at ReidsItaly.com we simply provde a general price range indicating the rough rate you should expect to pay for a standard double room in mid-season.

There are three price ranges, giving you a sense of which lodgings are budget, which are moderate, and which are splurges: