this hotel only has heat or cool air-conditioning. Once they switch to one or the other, you are stuck. they had switched to heat and then a heat wave. Our hotel room was so hot unless leaving the sliding door open, which let in mosquitos. Very loud with windows open as the hotel is on the route to the hospital and you hear the sirens of ambulances at least every 1/2 hour. The next night we were moved to the quiet side of the hotel where it was still hot but quieter. however the mosquitos forced us to close the doors. Hot again, but can sleep. Till.... at 7am the church bell tower that is maybe 50 yards away starts going off every 20 minutes all morning long. The short of it is maybe 3 hours of broken sleep. A beautiful hotel, great staff, but what a terrible stay. Be very careful staying here during transition of season times of the year. The location is close to the train station, but you will be walking alot to get to any of the shopping areas.

Please do not book this hotel. It is out of the main part of the city, in a terrible neighborhood, and on a busy main intersection of two four-lane roads. We pulled in late at night after driving for nine hours and expected the same treatment as the other hotels we had stayed in all over Europe. The door man said "You want ALL this luggage up to the room?" then he proceeded to start taking the luggage out and put it in the middle of the parking lot. (There is no entry - the front door opens onto the parking lot, which evidently we were not allowed to use.) We asked him if he had a cart for the luggage and he misunderstood and said "Parking garage is across the street (4 busy lanes). You go park it yourself." My husband said "Don't you have valet?" and he responded "yes, but you go park it yourself" so it took my husband 45 minutes to park the car. We got up to the room and it looked like a bordello. Every wall was done in salmon-colored brocade and accented by RED velvet! All the furniture was upholstered in flocked red velvet, and the bed was hard as a rock. The room was old, and garish, and we immediately started looking for another hotel until we realized we would have to pay a day's penalty, and honestly we were so tired we thought that maybe we could get used to it. The worse part was the attitude of about half the staff. I asked a very nice lady at check in if we were in the main part of the city and she said yes (though we weren't) and she said they had a complementary courtesy van for anywhere we wanted to go. So the next day we go down and try to make reservations to the Duomo at 10:00 the next day. The concierge was so rude and acted like we were interrupting his busy day even though there was no one else there. This man continued to treat us like that the entire time, and I wondered how they could have customers with him being so prickly. Then I noticed that whenever the customers were Italian, he was all smiles. There was another concierge who was nice to us, but he was hardly ever there. The bag boys and the wait staff in the restaurant were all huffy toward us as well, though not to the Italians. When we went downstairs to go to the Duomo the next day, we were told that the courtesy car hours had changed so that they didn't start until 10:00. We presented the card we had be given showing that the courtesy car was supposed to start at 9:30 and said "the concierge just made us an appointment yesterday and we have to be there at 10:00." He just shrugged and said the times had changed, they would call us a taxi. So while we were waiting for the taxi, the courtesy car driver shows up (at 9:30) and so we ask him if he will take us anyway, and he says well he will have to check to see if someone else (probably Italian) would need the car at 10:00. He went inside, then came out smiling and whistling, locked the van door and walked off without saying a word to us.

The rooms were old and hot and didn't have air conditioning. Though we had a balcony that overlooked a beautiful courtyard, it was so noisy out there from the traffic I couldn't even read out there. The hotel is in a terrible part of town. The first two nights we left the windows open to cool off the room and there were drunks yelling until 4:00 am, dogs barking, sirens going off every hour, and cars going by and honking. We walked back from a restaurant one night and were in fear for our lives with the hoodlums on the streets. Oh yes, the restaurants don't open until 7:30 at night and the hotel changed the courtesy car hours the day after we got there so they stopped at 8:00.

We started looking online, and the Villa Medici shows only the common areas that look modern, which is quite misleading. When we started looking further, we found that the Villa Medici is not even rated in the top 100 hotels in Florence -142nd to be exact. The rudeness and snotty attitudes by about half the staff just wore us down day after day, and it kind of put a pall on the whole trip for us. Kind of a bummer especially since we were paying over $400 a night.

i stayed here on a sickly night, i was checked in prior to my arrival and taken directly to my suite where i spent two days recovering from a bad cold. the room was very well decorated with original antiques and attentive personal butler service. on that occasion i failed to realise how well located it was too, it was not until my next visit that i noticed it was smack centre of town.

Luxurious room with touches of italian flair made it a pleasure to return home and relax after a long day out in Florence. Large room, with large bath and balcony, lovely lobby and restaurant pool area, away from crowds. The concierge and staff gave excellent service and advice for restaurants, currency, museums and reservatios, and train and transport -- truly first class, even when we had some unexpected change in plans, they helped us effortlessly. We felt very well taken care of.

A hotel car is available to drop you in the city in morning and evening, if you prefer not to walk.

We found an exceptionally good rate here but I would even splurge to stay here - if you like an elegant and graceful experience,without fuss and without crowds of tourists. The hotel had several groups but (like any good hotel) it didn't impair our experience.

I have never been disappointed staying at other Leading Hotels of the World and this was certainly the same experience.