It’s on Ulica Florianska itself, close to the Brama Florianska and Barbakan (respectively the Florianska Gate, the edge of the old city, and the remnant of the C14 defensive wall), which is a smart pedestrianised street lined with milliners and cake shops, the odd busker and lots of well-dressed shoppers. On weekend evenings, it’s quite noisy (even without any cars) so ask for a hotel room that faces the courtyard. The hotel itself is marked with an orange sign for the pizzeria in the basement (Vesuvius) which doubles as a breakfast-room.

Inside the hotel, reception is welcoming and efficient (and apparently manned at all hours). Your key gives entrance through both a glass door at the foot of the stairs (presumably taking into account the passing traffic from both the basement pizzeria and also the sportswear shop which lies just beyond reception). On each floor, two sets of rooms are each individually accessed behind yet another door (on the way up the stairs, look out for the lovely oil painting which gives the hotel a somewhat country-house feeling).

The rooms are somewhat sparse (even when we were upgraded to a “superior” room) with no pictures on the walls or adornments of any kind, but they are also comfortable, warm and reasonably well supplied. The TV is of no use unless you speak German or Polish, and the minibar is pretty dear. Marks off for the failure to provide individual soaps and shampoo rather than the bottle-attached-to-the-wall variety.

Breakfast not bad – extremely nice breads and rolls, cold cuts (including fresh cheese), so-so cereals, served in the fresco-ed cellar whose faux-sky ceiling and bucolic wall scenes are quite a nice, soothing start to the day.

(Incidentally, top marks for the pizzas if, like me, you leave your luggage in the hotel on the morning of departure and want to grab something before you head to the airport – you also get a 10% voucher if you stay in the hotel though the prices are so reasonable - £3/$5 for a very nice pizza – that it hardly seems worth it).