Cristina G.
Yelp
We had such an odd experience at Hotel Laurentia. My friend, cousins, and I ended up booking a couple of nights here after our other hotel arrangements in Ostia didn't work out. The man at the front desk during the day was helpful and accommodating, but the front desk person working the evening was rude and unprofessional.
The hotel is in San Lorenzo which is popular with college students and hipsters alike. It's a few blocks away from what the hotel staff described as a bad neighborhood, but I think they took a ton of extreme precautions. After 8pm, they lock the front doors to the hotel. YES - LOCKED. You'll have to ring the bell and bang on the door, and even then, the front desk person might ignore you, making the assumption that it's a drunk passerby just playing a prank. So bizarre. We ended up waiting 15 minutes and then getting ID'ed as if we were trying to get into an exclusive night club before getting in to the hotel that we paid good money for. I'll stop here because even thinking about this experience gets me agitated. For more than 120 euros per night, you would think they had a better system organized here.
The rooms were okay... roomy but outdated and totally dark. 0 windows!
The bathrooms were very clean and extremely spacious.
I'd give this hotel one star if it wasn't for the spacious rooms and decent front desk person working in the earlier hours. He was pretty helpful in giving us directions and letting us know which routes to take if we chose to walk to local attractions. Those factors were the only saving grace here. Book at your own risk.