GGuest UserI chose to stay at the Centro Paolo VI when I booked a trip to Italy at short notice, inspired by the good reviews on Trippadvisor. My experience was predominantly positive. Room was clean, with good air-conditioning. The furnishings were simple. The bed was, perhaps, a little too firm for my taste, and a bit low for a bloke with a bad knee. :-) Lighting in the bedroom might have been a bit brighter. The bathroom was clean, although, as mentioned by some other reviews, the shower was a bit tight. The building is a bit of a mixture. In part, it is a grand baroque palace, but other parts are much more functional. It has clearly been in institutional use for a long time. I gather that, before taking on its present function in 1975, it had been a seminary. It remains a church foundation, and functions mainly as a conference centre, offering meeting rooms for far more more people than it could accommodate overnight. Its lifts, as remarked in some less positive reviews, are decidedly old-fashioned but were perfectly adequate to get me and my luggage up and down, which is, after all, the only thing you need a lift to do. So far as food is concerned, breakfast was served in buffet style, with staff bringing coffee or tea to guests at their tables. Weather permitting, breakfast can be eaten outside in the garden. What was less helpful about the very obvious conference centre purpose was the situation about evening meals. For the first four evenings of my stay, I ate in the restaurant. Choice was a bit limited, but the food was tasty and served by a friendly waiter. On the fifth night, a Sunday, I cheerfully set off to the restaurant, only to find it closed. Not only is it always closed on Sundays, it was now closed for a summer break until 28 August! This is NOT notified on the web site, nor any any notice displayed in the building. This may make perfect sense for a conference centre in a period when nobody is arranging conferences, but is awkward for holiday accommodation. The building is in a quiet area, but is served by buses on neighbouring streets. Brescia's complex one-way system means that, for example, the 12 from the station stops one street away at the front, but the bus going towards the station stops a couple of streets to the rear. It is only about 5 minutes' walk to the biggest cultural site of the city, the Santa Giulia Museum, and other places of interest are within walking distance. Staff were invariably friendly and helpful. Incidentally, if you are going by car, booking directly with the institutions gets free parking in a safe, enclosed yard.
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