Rome's top tourist tax rate is EUR 10.00 per person per night, and that is not a round number chosen for tidiness: it is the exact ceiling that a 2010 national decree allows the city to charge. Roma Capitale sits on that legal maximum for five-star hotels, and grades everything below it down to EUR 3.00 for a campsite pitch. The charge is called the contributo di soggiorno, it is per person and per night rather than per room, it stops after ten consecutive nights in the same property, and it is almost never included in the price your booking site quoted you. Children are free until their tenth birthday. Expect to be asked for it at check-out, sometimes in cash, on top of a bill you thought was settled.
What Rome charges per night
Rome's tourist tax is banded by star rating for hotels, and the five bands run from EUR 4.00 to EUR 10.00 per person per night. The rates were approved by Deliberazione della Giunta Capitolina n. 255 of 17 July 2023 and took effect on 1 October 2023; Roma Capitale's own notice stresses that the date that matters is the night you sleep, not the date you booked, so a 2023 reservation for a 2026 stay is charged at the 2026-current rate (Roma Capitale, Comunicato - Applicazione nuove tariffe Contributo di Soggiorno, checked 15 September 2026).
| Hotel classification | Per person per night | Max nights |
|---|---|---|
| 1 star | EUR 4.00 | 10 |
| 2 star | EUR 5.00 | 10 |
| 3 star | EUR 6.00 | 10 |
| 4 star | EUR 7.50 | 10 |
| 5 star or higher | EUR 10.00 | 10 |
Figures from Roma Capitale's published tariff table, Tabella con le nuove tariffe del Contributo di soggiorno (checked 15 September 2026). A hotel's dipendenza — an annexe operating under the same classification — is charged at the same rate as the main building. The EUR 10.00 figure is not a municipal invention: article 14, comma 16, letter e) of Decreto-legge 31 May 2010 n. 78 authorises Rome to introduce a stay contribution "according to criteria of gradualness in proportion to their classification, up to a maximum amount of 10 euro per night" (Normattiva, DECRETO-LEGGE 31 maggio 2010, n. 78, art. 14, checked 15 September 2026).
Everything that is not a hotel
Non-hotel accommodation in Rome is taxed by type rather than by stars, and the spread is wider than the hotel scale suggests. The table below groups the main categories a visitor is likely to book, with the rate each attracts.
| Accommodation type | Per person per night | Max nights |
|---|---|---|
| Campsite, holiday village, serviced stopping area | EUR 3.00 | 5 |
| Hostel or ostello (run commercially) | EUR 3.50 | 10 |
| Guest house or affittacamere, categories 3 to 1 | EUR 5.00 to EUR 7.00 | 10 |
| Holiday house or apartment (CAV), categories 2 and 1 | EUR 5.00 to EUR 6.00 | 10 |
| B&B, agriturismo, casa per ferie, residenza turistico-alberghiera | EUR 6.00 | 10 |
| Alloggio per uso turistico or short let | EUR 6.00 | 10 |
All figures from the same Roma Capitale tariff table (checked 15 September 2026). The category system for guest houses and holiday apartments is not self-evident, and it is set by regional law rather than by the city: Regione Lazio's Regolamento regionale 7 agosto 2015 n. 8 allows guest houses and affittacamere one to three categories and holiday houses one to two, with the operator declaring which one the property meets (Regione Lazio, Regolamento regionale 7 agosto 2015, n. 8, checked 15 September 2026). Roma Capitale required holiday-apartment operators to self-certify into category 1 at EUR 6.00 or category 2 at EUR 5.00 by 1 October 2023 (Roma Capitale, Avviso per i gestori di case e appartamenti per vacanze, checked 15 September 2026).
The EUR 6.00 row at the bottom is the one that catches most travellers. Rome does not care whether your apartment was listed on a booking platform, arranged privately, or classified as a formal holiday-rental business: an alloggio per uso turistico under regional law and an ordinary short let under article 4 of Decreto-legge 50/2017 both attract EUR 6.00 per person per night, the same as a three-star hotel.
Who is exempt from paying
Rome's exemption list is narrow, specific, and mostly requires paperwork you will not have. The controlling text is the regulation republished with Deliberazione dell'Assemblea Capitolina n. 34 of 12 March 2024, which lists the exempt categories at article 5: minors until the completion of their tenth year of age; people needing medical treatment plus one accompanying person per patient, and both parents of an under-18 patient; coach drivers and one tour leader per 25 participants in an organised group; police and armed-forces personnel staying for public-order duties; staff of the accommodation who work there; people housed by the civil protection service or by public order in an emergency; volunteers serving in a disaster; and people with a severe disability certified under law 104/1992, together with their family caregiver (Roma Capitale, Deliberazione dell'Assemblea Capitolina n. 34 del 12 marzo 2024, checked 15 September 2026).
The disability exemption is the newest of these and dates from a 2022 change: Roma Capitale's notice records that Assemblea Capitolina deliberation n. 87 of 3 November 2022 introduced it, together with a reimbursement to operators for card-processing commissions, and that the change took legal effect on 1 February 2023 after publication on the finance ministry's portal (Roma Capitale, Avviso all'utenza - Modifiche al Regolamento del contributo di soggiorno, checked 15 September 2026).
Two structural exemptions have nothing to do with the traveller's circumstances. Anyone staying in an ostello della gioventù — a genuine youth hostel, which Regione Lazio defines as non-commercial and run by a public body, religious or charitable organisation, social cooperative or non-profit association — pays nothing at all. A commercially run Hostel o Ostello under article 6 of the same regional regulation pays EUR 3.50. The hostel you found on a booking site in Rome is far more likely to be the second than the first, so do not assume the exemption applies to you. The other exemption covers the Polline and Martignano enclave, a detached fragment of Roma Capitale's territory 40 km north of the city that no ordinary visitor will be sleeping in.
Why the charge stops at ten nights
The ten-night limit is a cap on consecutive nights in one property within the calendar year, not an annual allowance across the city. Roma Capitale's accommodation-office FAQ states the rule plainly: the contribution applies per person, at the tariff for the category, "for a maximum of 10 consecutive nights in the same structure during the calendar year" (Roma Capitale, 5 - Contributo di soggiorno e obblighi di gestione per le attività ricettive, checked 15 September 2026). Open-air sites are capped at five nights instead of ten, per the published tariff table.
What that means in practice is that a fourteen-night stay in one hotel is charged for ten nights, and nights eleven to fourteen are free. It also means that moving hotel mid-trip restarts the counter. Two seven-night stays in two different properties are charged fourteen nights, not ten, because neither run exceeds the cap.
A separate and easily confused rule sits at article 6, comma 2 of the regulation. For people staying in Rome for a contractually fixed course of study certified by a university or accredited training body, and for people staying for documented work reasons, the cap becomes ten nights in total across the whole calendar year — even when the nights are not consecutive and are spread across the year, with five nights for open-air sites. That is a genuine concession for students and business travellers, and it is the only place where the calendar year rather than the single stay does the work.
Why it is not in your booking total
Rome's tourist tax is collected by the accommodation, not by the city, which is why it sits outside the price a booking site showed you. The regulation designates hotel operators, short-let managers, estate agents and online-portal operators as responsabili del contributo: they must collect the money from the guest, issue a numbered and named receipt, and pay it to Roma Capitale within sixteen days of the end of each calendar quarter — including amounts they were owed but never collected from the guest (Roma Capitale, Deliberazione dell'Assemblea Capitolina n. 34 del 12 marzo 2024, checked 15 September 2026). A property that lets you walk out without paying is out of pocket, which explains the firmness at the desk.
The regulation also obliges every property to tell you about the tax in multiple languages, to display the amount and the rules on the premises, and to publish them on its own website. If a Rome listing says nothing at all about the contributo, that is a breach of its own obligations rather than a sign the tax does not apply.
Booking platforms are the exception to the pay-at-the-property pattern, and only some of them. Roma Capitale's tourism portal records an agreement under which Airbnb began collecting the stay contribution from guests at the point of booking confirmation from 1 July 2020 and remitting it to the city quarterly, with over-payments from cancellations offset against later remittances (Turismo Roma, Tax collection agreement between Airbnb and Roma Capitale, checked 15 September 2026). That page dates from 2020, so treat it as evidence that platform collection exists in Rome rather than as a guarantee for your particular booking.
What to check at the desk
Ask three questions when you check in rather than when you leave: how much per person per night, whether the property takes it by card, and whether it was already collected by the platform you booked through. The answers take a minute and remove the entire class of end-of-stay surprise, and any front desk in Rome is used to being asked.
Ask for the receipt as well. The property is required to issue a numbered, named quietanza for the contributo, and it is the only proof that the money reached the city rather than a drawer — which matters if you are travelling on business and expect to reclaim the cost.
This guide covers Roma Capitale's own tax and nothing else. It does not set out the operator-side quarterly reporting, annual declaration or penalty regime, which concern hosts rather than guests; it does not cover the separate administrative fees the city charges accommodation businesses; and it does not cover any other Italian city, because every comune sets its own rates and exemptions. Rome's rates have stood unchanged since 1 October 2023 as of the date on this page, and Roma Capitale publishes changes on its Contributo di soggiorno service page, with an English summary maintained by Turismo Roma — check one of those before you budget a long or expensive stay.