Rome, Italy

The Fifteen Keys Hotel

Price per night from$484.88

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR448.18), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Mod-Roman townhouse

Setting

Boho Monti neighbourhood

Boutique stay The Fifteen Keys Hotel is just the place to stir moving-to-Italy aspirations. Once a traditional townhouse, this city-centre stay has been beautifully remodelled into a cosy hotel with 15 stylish rooms, each decorated in shades of blue or grey with modern minimalist furnishings. Take your morning feast (and coffee, of course) outside in the leafy inner courtyard when weather allows. There are plenty of lovely local spots nearby (staff know ‘em all…), and drinks run from dusk till dawn in the 24-hour blue-toned bar. 

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A glass of prosecco each, plus a selection of organic herbal teas and home-made patisserie

Facilities

Photos The Fifteen Keys Hotel facilities

Need to know

Rooms

15, including one suite.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £422.44 (€493), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €7.50 per person per night on check-out.

More details

Rates usually include a buffet breakfast (with seasonal fruit, cereals, organic yogurt, Italian ham and cheese, fresh breads, pastries and eggs), and use of the hotel’s bicycles.

Also

Adventurous types can rent Vespas from the hotel, and in-room massage treatments can be arranged for those seeking more relaxed pursuits.

At the hotel

Free WiFi throughout, bicycles to borrow, complimentary afternoon tea hour. In rooms: TV, minibar, free bottled water, tea- and coffee-making facilities, Malin+Goetz bath products. There’s also an Illy espresso machine in the Terrace Blue and Master Grey Rooms.

Our favourite rooms

The Master Grey Room has a lovely little living space just outside the bedroom, and the Terrace Blue Room has a private outdoor space that’s particularly charming in the evening, when the city lights twinkle.

Packing tips

Bring boots made for walking and an elegantly understated holiday wardrobe (think capsule collection). Leave room in your bag for a bottle of wine and other Italian goodies.

Also

The hotel entrance is wide enough for wheelchair access, but there’s a high step up to it. The lobby, breakfast room are wheelchair accessible, but the lift is only 50cm wide.

Pet‐friendly

Dogs up to 10 kilogrammes are welcome to stay for €15 a night; dog bowls and a bed will be provided. See more pet-friendly hotels in Rome.

Children

Babes-in-arms are welcome, but this isn’t a very child-friendly hotel. Cots and highchairs can be provided for very small Smiths.

Food and Drink

Photos The Fifteen Keys Hotel food and drink

Top Table

Pick a table in the inner courtyard when weather permits; it has all the charms of streetside café dining, but with privacy and no traffic noise.

Dress Code

Channel your inner Italian and keep it effortlessly stylish in well-done classic pieces; think photo-worthy brunch with friends.

Hotel restaurant

There’s no restaurant, but breakfast is served in a light-filled downstairs room with floor-to-ceiling windows, and in the leafy interior courtyard. There’s a banquet of seasonal fruits, organic yoghurt, cereals, Italian hams and cheeses, fresh bread and pastries, and eggs-many-ways at the buffet breakfast. Juices, tea and coffee are also available.

Hotel bar

The bar is a casual and cosy area, with an expansive corner sofa, ocean-blue walls, a wall-to-wall bevelled mirror, a scattering of little tables and chairs, and twinkling gold lights. A selection of wines, cocktails, coffees or teas is available round the clock, and in the evenings there’s often live jazz and lounge music. The cocktail specialities change seasonally, but try the signature drink with ginger and mint when available. Cold sharing plates, including Caprese salad and melon with cured ham, are also available.

Last orders

Breakfast is served from 7.30am to 10.30am Monday to Saturday and 8am to 11am on Sunday. Drinks are available in the bar area 24 hours a day.

Room service

There’s no room service, but your in-room minibar is stocked with drinks of both the soft and hard variety, and sweet and savoury Eataly snacks.

Location

Photos The Fifteen Keys Hotel location
Address
The Fifteen Keys Hotel
Via Urbana, 6/7
Rome
00184
Italy

The hotel is on via Urbana, just steps away from the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

Planes

Rome Ciampino is 30 minutes away by car; Fiumicino is a 40-minute drive; arrange transfers to and from either with the hotel: €80 for up to three guests, €100 for seven or €120 for up to eight.

Trains

Trains from Florence, Milan, Naples, Venice, Turin and Bari pull into nearby Termini station. Arrange a private transfer (€30 for up to three guests or €40 for up to eight) for the short drive to and from the hotel.

Automobiles

Unless you enjoy pretending to be a character from the Italian Job, leave the pulse-quickening city driving to professionals and locals. If you do drive, the nearest car park is 200 metres from the hotel, and prices vary depending on the size of car and length of stay.

Worth getting out of bed for

The Fifteen Keys Hotel is in the fabulously central Monti neighbourhood, and it’s a short walk away from the Roman Forum and Colosseum. The Trevi Fountain is a leisurely 20-minute stroll north. Borrow the hotel’s bikes and explore the area, or browse the boutiques in Rione. On the weekend, check out nearby Monti market, your typical street-stall affair, with locally made arts and crafts, or sign up for a cooking class at Pasta Chef and learn to make authentic Roman dishes, like cacio e pepe

Local restaurants

For laid-back lunches and dinners, head to Broccoletti, just around the corner from the hotel. The restaurant offers a fresh and light take on classic trattoria dishes and breads, including mouthwatering foccacia, baked on-site daily. Eat pizza like the locals – thin crust, wood-fired – at Pizzeria Alle Carrette, which is open only for dinner. We recommend an order of fried courgette flowers to nibble on while you wait for mains. Locavores will love dinners (and brunches) at Urbana 47, with its regional Lazio dishes. Start with the pumpkin and potato millefoglie and end with the creamy cheesecake.

Local cafés

At bakery Zia Rosetta there are smoothies, coffee, and a selection of artisanal sandwiches made on ‘rosette’ rolls; they’re an excellent takeaway snack for a day of urban exploring. Caffé Colette is a coffee shop within Urbana 47, and serves weekday Italian breakfasts of homemade croissants, ciambellone (a sweet pie), fruit tarts and tea and coffee. They also have an eggy, American-style breakfast and a bread-loaded Continental option; both come with juice or your choice of coffee.

Local bars

All exposed-beam ceilings and rustic concrete walls, Sacripante is a bar within an art gallery that once housed an 18th-century Roman convent; it’s bar Inception. Order an aperitivo at the apothecary-table-style counter and browse the modern-art collection. You’ll need a reservation and a password to gain access to the Jerry Thomas Project Speakeasy, so check their website before you go. Inside, an expert barman shakes up twists on classic cocktails (no vodka allowed, though) and musicians blowing, strumming and tapping out jazz music.

Reviews

Photos The Fifteen Keys Hotel reviews
Morwenna Ferrier

Anonymous review

By Morwenna Ferrier , Fashion editor

In the Eternal City, you’re never far from some monumental testament to a history that stretches back over two millennia. At the Fifteen Keys Hotel, you’re well placed for that familiar Roman experience: the encounter with the vastness of human triumph and tragedy; buildings that tell stories that began long, long ago.

A few minutes down Via Urbana, the gently sloping road the hotel sits on, and you’re at the Coliseum, where Christians were fed to the lions and the gladiators bled for a shot at survival. Next to the Coliseum you find the Palatine Hill, the most central of the Italian capital’s seven hills, which sits above the Forum – the heart of ancient Rome – and peers over at the Circus Maximus. There’s much to see, most of it ten minutes from your room.

Today, Monti – Fifteen Keys’ boho neighbourhood – is described by Romans as trendy yet authentic, elegant but with some energy to it. There are good restaurants and bars wherever you look, and these modern places comfortably rub up against the ancient sites they sit beside. You don’t need to go far to find a good Aperol Spritz, a traditional cacio e pepe or some proper gelato.

Which is not to say that Monti has completely resisted globalisation: only a few doors down from the wonderful bookshop Libri Necessari, you’ll find a burger joint that wouldn’t look out of place in Brooklyn.  

But in short, you’re in just the right location. The hotel itself was converted from a five-storey townhouse in 2015. It has 15 rooms (hence the title) all stylish and inviting. In the communal areas, modern, brightly coloured furnishings are favoured over anything overbearingly luxurious or ostentatious. There’s a hint of art deco in the stucco that appears, as well as in the mirrors that can be found in the bar and breakfast area.

Considering Italians still haven’t mastered breakfast in the way they have every other meal of the day, the breakfast at the Fifteen Keys is a good one: a buffet that eschews the local fondness for overly sweet pastries for fresh yoghurt, fruit, eggs and, of course, great coffee. In the afternoon, tea is served. For us, on a hot day spent walking the sites of ancient Rome, this meant cool ginger and lemon tea, the perfect thing to revive you after a day spent with history in the sun.

The rooms themselves are light and airy, with large windows and doors that open out onto a plant-laden central courtyard or over nearby rooftops, so that you can sit and feel the presence of the city. The beds are large and comfy, there are reception hallways with plenty of wardrobe space and the bathrooms are as well appointed as you’d expect, with Malin + Goetz products, rain showers, whitewashed walls and large sinks.

You can’t eat dinner at the hotel but Monti is full of good restaurants and the hotel’s staff know where to send you and can usually get you a reservation. If you’re feeling in a Roman Holiday mood you can even get them to rent you a Vespa. In fact, the people working at the Fifteen Keys are one of its biggest pluses. They’re incredibly friendly, always willing to help and know their city inside out. Whatever you need, they will endeavour to sort it out for you. Their convivial manner helps set the tone for a hotel that is stylish and comfortable, but feels welcoming and residential.

Its origins as a townhouse are not hard to miss – the feeling is that of being in a very artfully appointed apartment. The Fifteen Keys is not a grand place. It’s an elegant, friendly place, one that shows you out into the magical city on its doorstep and then provides peace and tranquillity from that same city when you need it. For unlocking the treasures of Rome, I can’t think of a better base.

 
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Price per night from $484.88