Special Places to Stay - More than a bed for the night

Up the sweep of the dark communal wooden staircase into another world, a fascinating little B&B in the peaceful old Jewish quarter of Trastevere. The house has been in Marco's family for 200 years and those sedate gentlemen on the blue walls are just some of the previous inhabitants. Marco and his wife Gianna, great travellers and anglophiles, have filled the family home with bits and pieces from their journeys abroad. Floor to ceiling shelves heave under the weight of books in the red drawing room, gorgeous pieces of art and sculpture beautify walls and tables, and floors are laid with exquisite parquet; there's plenty of dark wood and every square inch gleams. The convivial oval dining table awaits guests eager to sample Gianna's lavish breakfasts. Bedrooms, reached through a guest sitting room, have bold flowers – pinks, reds, yellows – or pinstripes on the walls, a backdrop to handsome bedsteads and great little bathrooms, while the best have miniature staircases up to private terraces with views that roll down over the terracotta patchwork of Trastevere's tiny terracotta roofs and fascinating web of streets.