Answer to a traveller's prayer

Sister Elisabetta and Sister Lucia run a tight ship. Picture / Peter Calder

From the uneven, ancient cobbled street it didn't look like much. As is common in Italy, no sign announced the building's purpose and it was only after I checked the street number that I was sure enough of my ground to press the buzzer.

The response was instant. With an electronic snort, the door sprung open and I was admitted to a small vestibule, whose door was also remotely controlled by the diminutive nun at the front desk.

This enclosure, a small version of the security corral at a bank's entrance, allowed the good sister to assess the arrival. But she wasted no time in buzzing me through so presumably she had been assessing me by security camera as I fumbled with my notebook on the street.

Instantly, the stress of flying across 12 time zones melted away. It felt like home.

The home of the Dominican Sisters at Istituto Il Rosario is the answer to the prayers of an independent traveller in Italy. The convent is one of dozens in the country to have responded creatively to the challenge posed by declining numbers of novitiates - its small, tidy spartan rooms make perfect accommodation in cities of the peninsula where hotel charges can eat up easily half a holiday budget.

If you think that air-conditioning, a minibar, room service and cable television are essential elements of comfortable holiday lodgings, the sisters have nothing to offer you. But if you figure, as I do, that cities are to be explored on their streets, and that a hotel is a place to sleep, shower and leave your valuables, the convents of Italy are ideal, not least because they cost less than half what is charged at all but the cheapest hotels.

They even undercut the cheap dives near the railway station where drug dealers and hookers work the lobby. I know this because, unable to get a booking in any convent, I stayed in such a place the night before I flew home.

At Il Rosario, I paid the equivalent of $75 a night for digs in Rome's historic centre, a couple of hundred metres from the transport hub of the Piazza Venezia in one direction and the Colosseum and Forum in another.

The nun who had welcomed me pointed me at the lift and handed me the key - no porters here.

The room was as stark and unsparing as a midnight prayer. It contained a single bed with crisply starched pure cotton sheets (the Italians, bless them, seem not to have discovered polyester), a handbasin (the immaculate shared bathroom was down the hall), a table and chair and a wardrobe - into which, I have to confess, the gory crucifix at the bedhead was quickly dispatched.

Quite devoid of luxury, it was nonetheless comfortable and I could have dined off the spick and span floors.

Better still, the room was so deep within the convent that it seemed remote from the street noise beyond the high walls. It was quiet enough even to hear the sisters' pure voices raised in song at matins and vespers. At these times, the desk is unattended. If you need anything, you wait.

In many ways, it feels like staying in another time as well as another place, although this is a 21st-century operation and Il Rosario has a website and processes email bookings in several languages.

They even maintain their own internet cafe in a side room with an honesty box for donations but they don't take credit cards and observe the distinctly pre-modern practice of not requiring a deposit when you email them a booking, relying on your pilgrim honesty as a guarantee against a no-show.

They run a tight ship. Checkout time is 9am. There's a sign in the room in several languages, the English version of which says: "Please make your bed and keep your room tidy", although I suspect it was less an instruction than advice that no one else is going to do it for you.

In Florence we were the guests of the Sisters of Sant' Elisabetta, in a leafy if rather busy road about 20 minutes from the tourist-heavy centre.

A large wooden crucifix on the wall and a sober Annunciation above the single beds dispelled any impure thoughts. There seemed an inordinate amount of furniture until we realised that the wardrobe and chest of drawers were fold-out beds.

As at most convents there is an 11pm curfew. That's well after my bedtime, so it was no problem. But when we checked in we were told that we needed to ring a different bell after 11pm.

This puzzled me because I had understood that the curfew was strictly enforced - if you missed it, you made your own arrangements for the night. When I asked about this, the nun at the counter told me that after 11pm I would have to "talk to Sister Lucia", presumably through the intercom on the gate.

This information was imparted with the unsmiling expression a doctor might assume to advise that amputation was inevitable. When I met Lucia, the Mother Superior, I understood why. Built like a nuggety prop forward, she uttered innocuous phrases like "Va bene" as though they were iceberg alerts on a North Sea freighter.

I shuddered at the thought of summoning her downstairs in her dressing gown to open the door to a couple of Kiwis who had lost track of time. It would, I concluded, be far safer to sleep under a bridge than to "talk to Sister Lucia".

In the end, she turned out to be a sweetheart. She posed, very reluctantly, for my camera, only after having extracted from my wife an undertaking that she would destroy - on the nuns' behalf - any article by me that was less than complimentary. And she hefted my luggage into the cab with one hand.

A word of advice. Italians are pretty bad at breakfast, which seldom runs to more than a croissant dusted with icing sugar, and a cup of coffee. The nuns' version - which is often charged for separately - is even worse, a sort of gastronomic penance in a country where eating is the second religion.

I winced my way through a cup of coffee out of one of those machines you find in hospital waiting-rooms. I shuddered at the sight of cornflakes, although on one occasion once there was fresh-baked bread.

It's better - as it is everywhere in Italy - to buy something fresh from the market and enjoy it on a park bench in the warm morning sun as the city wakes and where the convent curfew seems very distant. Checklist

Given the prices they charge, convents in Italy are popular and you will need to book ahead in major cities. In smaller towns it is always worth asking at the tourist office if there is a convent offering lodgings.

Bed and Blessings - Italy, by June and Anne Walshe (Paulist Press) lists several dozen by city, and has helpful Italian versions of forms to fax to make bookings.

The Church of Santa Susanna website also lists convents in Rome, Florence and Venice, including email addresses for several, and each will refer you to others.

The convents welcome non-Catholics, although in remote areas you reportedly get a warmer reception if you attend Mass. Few of the nuns speak English. None expects a deposit - so be sure to cancel if you change your mind - and almost none accept credit cards.