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Partly the choice of provider will depend on coverage in your area. I expect all of the providers do the same sorts of 'packages' - the only one I have any experience of is a dongle from 3, which cost about €20, and this has a pay as you go SIM which is charged on connection time at €1 per hour. For me this gives me about 3.5Mb download speed, (it claims up to 7Mb) but I can't say how this might differ depending on local conditions.  Other packages are based on data transferred, and you should carefully peruse the details of these offers if it looks as if one would suit you, because the charging gets quite complex. This is the site for 3  . (The key word you want is chiavette, which is �������� for dongle.)

If you are totally stuck - these hotels have free Internet in their public places  [2 wifi, and one with modem]  – drink some coffee while you work, have a snack, chill out;-  

This time, we purchased a TIM CHIAVETTA with a special offer. It was 59 euros for 3 months unlimited use, including the chiavetta.

Last September we bought a chiavetta from Wind for, I think, 49 euros on a pay-as-you-go package.  A re-charge costs 9 euros for unlimited use for one month. We didn't want a contract, or a monthly fee, we simply wanted to be able to be able to have internet access for the few weeks of the year that we are in our apartment, and it seems to work well. The boring bit was poring though all the brochures of all the packages from every available provider, before making a decision as to which one to go for...! 

thanks for the feedback - some good pointers to follow up on