I visited Ciao Roma with a friend when we were in Rome as part of a larger tour of Italy. We booked the hostel purely because it was so cheap, so we didn't exactly have high expectations, and for our needs it was fine. We had a room with a double bed and an en suite (but tiny) bathroom.
The standard of cleanliness was extremely disappointing - the shower drain was backed up so every time we had a shower the bathroom flooded and brought up the considerable amount of dirt on the floor. Plus I didn't trust the sheets which had some odd stains, but after a long day trekking around Rome that didn't really seem to matter.
The other disappointing thing was the lack of any decent air conditioning, which is a big problem if you're visiting Rome in August! There was a switch for the air conditioning but it had a big "Out of Order" sign on it, and when we asked the staff we were told that there were no plans to fix it, but we could use the fan provided in the wardrobe. The fan was filthy, like everything else in the room, but we were so hot we were grateful for anything we could get!
We had no problem sleeping because we were always so tired after our long days out, but we had to leave the windows open to tempt in some non-existing breeze, and the noise from the bars and pubs in the area was very loud. Plus there was a homeless guy who hung around in the street outside the hostel, collecting bottles, and one night he decided to smash all his bottles on the surrounding cars. When he ran out of bottles he started just kicking the cars instead. I guess he was bored, but it made an almighty racket!
Anyway, for backpacking gap year students like me and my friend, this hostel is all right, but definitely not the best we stayed in during our Italy trip. For anyone else, it would be awful. So I would not recommend it!
- Ciao Roma Rome
