See my review of the Baltic Hotel in regards to background. The Porta Pia is owned by the same people.

After the problems we found with the Baltic, the Porta Pia was a good but basic hotel with friendly staff.

It was ok for a 1 night stay (possibly 2) but not for much longer.

Booked the Porta Pia directly via email. No problems whatsoever. Hotel room was clean, bathroom clean. The only downside is the location of the nearest Metro and its only a 400m walk. just use the bus instead. All the bars and restaurants around the Hotel were very acceptable. We were out late at night and felt perfectly safe.

We stayed 5 nights in this hotel on August 2007. The room was clean and appeared like it was recently renovated, it had all that we needed including a flat screen TV & airconditioner. The bathroom was compact but clean & pleasant.

The hotel itself is actually a few apartments put toghther in an apartment building on the second floor. There is an old but classic elevator that can take you to the hotel.
The front desk in manned untill midnight but if you plan to come back later then that tey will give you a key to the front door. The staff is very nice but not all of them speaks English. Breakfast is not inculded in the price of the room but you can add it for an extra payment.

The location is reasonable, very close to a bus stop but quite far from a metro station. Termini (the main rail metro & bus station) is about 15 min walk from the hotel. The area around the hotel has a few shops (that close early), at night its quite deserted so it doesn't feel very safe.

Overall the saty was nice, if you are looking for a good price & willing to compromise a bit on the location this is the good option.

I did not have high expectations of this hotel, based on the internet photos. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how clean & bright the room was. Everything was working great! There was also a mini-mart 2 doors away and bus stops werewithin easy reach.

The downsides - there was only 1 plug in the room (inconvenient if you have more than 1 gadget); it was a 400m walk from the subway (Castro Pretorio) and the area looked quite dodgy at night. Thankfully, we were without incidents.