Albani Hotel Florence, Florence

The Hotel Albani was our refuge from the madness that is Florence. The hotel is mid-sized, and retaining the old-world charm you'd expect in such a historic city. The staff is small but exceptionally helpful. All that we encountered were multi-lingual, speaking comfortably with us (english) and then turning to the German or Russian or Japanese tourists and communicating with them in their native languages. The porter led us to our room on the third floor. The passenger elevator is modern, but retains the external trim of an old-world, ornate iron and brass trimmed shaft running up the center of the hotel. A broad staircase wraps its way up the hotel around the passenger elevator shaft. The hotel corridors are well-lit and quite open. The colors used in the hotel are strong, vivid colors that we found at first mildly shocking, but after a moment or two found to interact very richly with the significant dark wood moldings and other wood features. Despite the heavy colors and dark wood, the hotel decor did NOT seem overly dark; quite the contrary, it was open and light. This was largely due to the preponderance of french doors throughout the building - at the ends of hallways, all around the public areas, and also in each room. Upon arrival in our room, our porter threw open the large french doors and, making a big deal of it, opened the full-length wooden shutters to reveal our modest/shared balcony, the beautiful Tuscan sky, and the sounds of one of the many cathedrals in the areas bells chiming in the distance. The room was moderate to small in size, but the lovely french doors and moderate temperatures opened up the outdoors to make the room feel plenty large enough. There was a large, built-in storage closet and a separate dresser - storing our clothes was not a problem. The bathroom was large, marble, clean and very accommodating. The bed linens were of a very high quality; the pillows were the standard hypo-allergenic, but you may request down (we did, and they were very comfortable). The bath towels were large, seemingly new, and of a high quality cotton. The bedroom floor was carpet, somewhat surprisingly - most hotels in Italy have hardwood or tile floors in my experience, but it seemed very clean (for carpet ...). The rooms are exceptionally clean, and kept that way by a very kind and attentive housekeeping staff. You get to know the front desk, housekeeping, and porter/valet staff by name, and they get to know yours as well. We stayed for five nights, and consider this one of the highlights of our trip.