We stayed at the hotel as members of a larger group on a coach tour of the region, The hotel is in the middle of Correggio and everything of interest in the town is within 10 minutes walking distance including a blues/ rock music bar which is open nightly. It is possible to explore the town and its buildings in a few hours but check when the buildings are open. The town offers only a limited number of restaurants especially on Mondays and Tuesdays although there are several cafes and pizzerias. If you have your own transport then the hotel is an excellent base for day visits to Bolognia; Modena and the Ferrari Gallery at Maranello; Mantova; and Ferrara.

The hotel is rated as a 4 star but this may reflect the fact that it is only one of two good hotels in the area. It is more like a very good 3 star hotel. It does have access to both surface and underground car parking although the latter comes at an extra cost.

All the rooms, except those on the mezzanine floor, are accessible by a single lift which can be a bit slow and small if a large group arrives together.

Our room, which overlooked the main street, was very quiet. However if you prefer to sleep with the windows open at night then be aware that the market starts very early on Wednesday mornings. Our room was a good size with plenty of wardrobe and drawer space. The very large double bed was firm but generally comfortable and the duvet was warm without being too hot. The air-conditioning in the room was quiet and efficient. The room also had a mini-bar; a safe and a multi-channel TV which only had two English language channels one of which was Fox TV!

Our bathroom had a bath as well as a shower with plenty of hot water. It was a good size. However the bath was a most unusual shape and rather uncomfortable to sit in. We never did find out why this was – perhaps as a water saving measure – perhaps to make it easier to get in and out of which it certainly didn’t!

The room and bathroom were kept clean and tidy on a daily basis. The public areas of the hotel always seemed clean and tidy.

Without exception all of the hotel staff were friendly, helpful, polite and charming even putting up with our hopeless Italian with good grace.

The hotel had a good restaurant which was just as well given the scarcity of other restaurants in town. It offered a varied menu and good wine list – although for a few days the hotel bar had run out of gin!

The breakfasts were good but with a bit of a limited choice of fruit and there was no hot buffet. There was a good range of yoghurts, cold buffets, bread, toast, pastries, coffee and tea. It is worth ordering boiled eggs just to see the cute egg boiling machine in action but do not do this if you want hard boiled eggs or if you are in a hurry!