The J and J by Jamie Dunford Wood

This extraordinary convent conversion offers guests perhaps the most spacious rooms in Florence - you could hold a cocktail party for 100 in some of them. The hotel retains original plaster work, frescos, antique wooden doors and vaulted ceilings, and the developers have then gone out to the markets and bought a variety of antiques, old runners and rugs and bric a brac to furnish it with - obviously done in a hurry, because there are some eccentric juxtapositions. The walls are colour washed to look like old stone, which rather overdoes the interior design effect. So not as authentic perhaps as the nearby Monna Lisa, but for sheer chutzpah it can't be beat.

The rooms
There are just 19 rooms, all extremely different, so ask for a photograph before you book. The rooms are arranged around an open courtyard. There is no elevator, bathrooms, amenities and service are basic, and the area is quite a walk from the historic center, but you'll come for the space.