Hotel Del Corso

Hotel Del Corso

Via del Corso sits inside a seventeenth-century palazzo near the Duomo, and at Hotel Del Corso the eighteen rooms start on the second floor, reached by stairs before the lift picks up from the first, twenty-seven steps in, worth knowing with heavy suitcases. What the layout asks of guests, the terrace repays: a rooftop space with tables for food and drink bought elsewhere, looking straight across to the Duomo, the Bargello and the Badia Fiorentina, a view few boutique hotels this size can offer. There is no restaurant sending out cooked breakfasts; a coffee point runs around the clock with water, coffee, tea and snacks, and staff point guests toward the espresso bars a few doors down. Rooms are air-conditioned and quiet, each with a minibar, safe and flat-screen TV, and an allergy-free room is available on request. Families travel well here, with triple rooms and a maisonette built for spreading out; couples wanting fewer people underfoot do better in the smaller doubles, the third-floor ones with the better view. There is no valet parking, but a long-standing arrangement with the Parking Duomo garage handles the ZTL registration that trips up drivers in central Florence. Piazza della Signoria, the Uffizi and Ponte Vecchio are all a walk of minutes, not a taxi ride. This suits people who want to be inside the old city without a lobby full of tour groups, and who don't mind a flight of stairs. It will frustrate anyone expecting a full restaurant or a lift straight from the street. The payoff is the terrace at dusk, the Duomo lit against the dark. Hotel Del Corso occupies a seventeenth-century palazzo a few minutes' walk from the Duomo, trading a full breakfast for a rooftop terrace that looks straight at the cathedral. It suits walkers happy with stairs over lifts; less so anyone wanting a restaurant downstairs or a step-free arrival.