Most charming neighbourhood in Rome for 5 days?

Rome: Trastevere, as close to Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere as you can.
Florence: Santo Spirito.

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I agree with Roberto. For a "charming neighborhood", Trastevere would be a good choice. While you may not be able to walk to all sites, there are Trams and other transport available.

Also agree with Trastevere. You can walk to just about all sights from there, including the Vatican and Colosseum, or at least we have with young kids.

For an apartment have a look at www.bonosa31.it Marco, the owner is excellent.

Campo dei Fiori, Pantheon area is in the middle of almost everything.

Another vote for Trastevere. We stayed in a lovely 2 bdrm apartment on a square And the rate was very reasonable.

http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p300175

We loved our apartment in Trastevere:

http://www.malvapalace.com/

It is on a small piazza very close to Ponte Sisto. We could do our morning run along the river path, and we walked to all the sights from here. 25 minutes to the Palatine Hill entrance to the Forum complex ( via Circus Maximus); 25 minutes to St. Peters, a bit longer to the Vatican museum. We loved coming back to the narrow winding streets of the neighborhood after all the traffic of the downtown area. There are some nice restaurants within a couple of blocks. If we went further away at night, a taxi back was only €8.

Seems we pretty much agree - Trastevere! It isn't that far a walk to the Vatican, Navona, Pantheon or even the Forum. It just seems to be a "real" place (I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean other than "I like ME there.") There are other rental agencies you might try. I've had (except for one time) good luck with vrbo.com. Don't forget to google earth the address - both informative and fun.

Enjoy!!!!

Thank you all. I have been researching and that area was the one I was drawn to. But your recommendations will definitely help me to narrow it down to that neighbourhood.

Nice place, Lola. Do you recall what the rate was?

We had a weekly rate as we were there for . . . . One week! I recall it was around €1000 but I will have to dig up my records to get the actual amount. I rented it through Tripadvisor and paid with our credit card. Lorenzo is a gracious and very helpful host. The apartment is every bit as lovely as it looked in the photos; it actually has two roof decks, which we used quite a lot in October. The apartment is on several levels---small kitchen on the first (European first) floor, main bedroom/living room on the second floor, and second bedroom with roof terrace access on the third. These are connected with a broad stone staircase. There is no elevator which is something that may or may not be important to you.

The rain shower in the master bedroom is pretty amazing.

Close enough, thank you Lola, it sounds great-making note of it!

Dave

I've stayed in Aventine hill neighborhood, nice area,close to Circus maximums and the Colusuem

I was a huge fan of the Campo di fiori area. We stayed 50m from the square and walking distance to all major tourist sites. It was a huge bonus walking to everything and not having to use public transport. It was also lovely walking down to the markets and surrounding coffee shops for breakfast.

Note that Piazza Giuditta Tavani Arquati in Trastevere has a CD seller who plays one Nicky Jam song in a loop at screachingly high volume till 2 am every night. Also, Trastevere is impossible to pronounce.

"Trastvefe is impossible to pronounce." Really? Try. very, very hard. You can do it.

Thanks Tom. I will try to make sure whatever apartment I rent is not near that! Thanks for the heads up.

Trastevere is hard to pronounce. I asked several Italians and they all said it differently. Some accent the first syllable, some the second, and sometimes the first two syllables are accented equally. English guidebooks indicate tra-STEV-uh-ruh which isn't very accurate, either.

My warning is that Trastevere is the party zone so be careful on proximity to piazzas 'cause anything goes, till 2 am anyway.

I must agree with Quirite.
There is only one way to pronounce Trastevere.
Also Italian is a phonetic language and you only have one way to pronounce the same group of letters, so it's hard to get it wrong. At most you can put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. In the case of Trastevere, the emphasis goes on the second syllable (tras-TE-ve-re).
It's not like English where GH can be pronounced as an F as in 'enough', as a hard G, as in "ghost" or not pronounced at all, as in "neighbor".

My theory is that it's not that it's hard to pronounce -- it's just that it's hard for some people (esp. Americans) to remember. I think the American brain wants to start it as "Trave...." (as in travel and traverse ) instead of "Tras..." which is an unknown syllable to start an English word with. ("Trash" doesn't count.) Throw in the Trevi fountain as a famous Roman site, and that just makes it harder. Anyway, just my theory.

That certainly is a convoluted theory, Michael!

Thanks everyone,
I ended up renting an apartment in Trastevere by the Piazza Merchant. Hopefully I chose a good area, the apartment looked very nice. I can't wait!

Another vote for Trastevere as the charming neighborhood. Pantheon more in center of things.

I find it difficult to remember how the pronounce Trastevere. I'm have to pronounce this first mentally, then I can say Trastevere. Revelry. Then I use where the accent is on that and put it towards Trastevere. Silly I know, I even say Revelry with an Italian accent...haha.

"RE" (said slower) then "velry". ...said quickly....

Then I think "TRA" ...done slowly with short A.. "Stevere"....quickly....rhyming with "revelry"

Sorry...that was confusing I know.

My suggestion on how to pronounce it would be to think of this two word phrase: "Trust every". That's pretty darn close to the actual pronunciation if you modify the vowels slightly.