Hotel Augustus was a bit surprising at first – as it’s located on the complete second floor of a historical building on piazza Fiume. At first I was puzzled, as I’ve expected to see a reception on the entry level. There is one directly after the entrance on the second floor. Once we’ve reached it – things came back to normal – the room was clean and visibly new. There was a PC in the room with a hybrid LCD display – playing the role of a wall-mounted TV and the computer monitor at the same time. For non-techies finding your way through the remove might take a while though. :)
The bed was very comfortable; breakfast was delivered in the room every morning on a pre-defined point in time (6:30-9:30). Ask the guy at the reception to set this for you the previous evening. Bathroom was clean and new, although a bit small. The room was nicely decorated (with Michelangelo replica poster) and had a direct view into the ruins located in the middle of piazza Fiume. When closed – the windows provided perfect isolation from the street noise, generated by the otherwise busy traffic.
Transport connectivity is quite good – there is a Metro stop 10 minutes away and Termini station is only 3 stops of all 6 different busses stopping 50 meters from the building on via Piava.
We’ve stayed there for 7 nights and we’ve enjoyed the stay. Something definitely worth mentioning is the exceptionally friendly staff. The guy there was always available to give us advice on where to buy and additional suitcase from, where to have nice dinner in a romantic place at a decent price, what would be the most optimal route to take in order to visit 5 different places the same day, which buses or other transport to take to get to a certain place, where not to shop, what is a reasonable price for the local ceramics, etc. It was exceptionally useful when he called us on the mobile phone roughly 15 minutes after we’ve left, to notify us about the keys and the mobile phone we’ve forgotten on the way home. I rushed back to collect them before going to the airport.
There are a number of great restaurants around - one pizzaria directly on the opposite side of the Piave street made the best lasagna we've had there. A small restaurant called "il Rifugio del Buttero" provided the best Napoli-style pizzas and other delicious Italian kitchen samples.
Of course you can always argue that the breakfast is the same every morning and that there are not gym and swimming pool in place, but practically looking – all we were looking for was a nice place to spend the nights at, at a decent price and ideally at a walking distance from the center. This is what we’ve got.
Augustus met those expectations quite well. It is by far not luxurious, but a very good deal for the money which I can recommend if you’re going to Rome for sightseeing.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC