Florence Airport (FLR) Transfers

Your car leaves the forecourt and stays on city streets all the way: no motorway, and Santa Maria Novella station is 7 km away. The airport puts itself 4 km from the centre and the ride at about 15 minutes. Its official name is Amerigo Vespucci; the tram map calls it Peretola. Toscana Aeroporti runs it, the same company that runs Pisa, and it is one of the two Tuscan airports on our Italy transfers page.

The season here is a plateau, not a spike. The airport carried 3.85 million passengers in 2025, its best year, and every month from April to October brought more than 350,000 of them. September was the busiest month, with 395,153, and August was quieter than May or June. The busiest single day was 7 September, with 15,149 passengers.

Book a September arrival with the notice you would give August anywhere else.

The tram, answered straight

For one person with a cabin bag and a hotel near the station, take the tram.

Line T2 costs €2.00 on the urban ticket, valid for 90 minutes, and older guides that still quote €1.70 are out of date. The stop is 2 minutes on foot from arrivals, a tram comes every 4 to 8 minutes through the weekday daytime, depending on the season, and the operator gives 20 minutes to the centre. The line now ends at San Marco - Università, 35 minutes from the airport by the airport's own figure. Two people pay €4.00.

The catch is the suitcase. The tram carries one bag of up to 10 kg and 55x40x20 cm free, wants a second ticket for anything larger, and refuses a bag over 80x45x25 cm or over 20 kg outright. It has no dedicated luggage space, so your bags stay beside you.

The second catch is the clock. The last tram leaves the airport at 23:58 from Sunday to Thursday, while the airport is open to scheduled flights until 23:59 and admits delayed ones after midnight.

Land at 14:00 on a Tuesday with a backpack and the tram is the right call.

Land at 23:45 on a Wednesday with a family and four suitcases, and it is a car or nothing.

The ZTL and the hotel door

The tram stops where the rails are. Your hotel may not be there.

Central Florence is a camera-gated ZTL in five sectors, switched on from 07:30 to 20:00 on weekdays and from 07:30 to 16:00 on Saturdays, with extra summer nights from Thursday to Saturday between April and early October. Florence grants its permanent whitelist, for every sector and the bus lanes, only to taxis and NCC cars licensed by a Tuscan municipality. An NCC car licensed outside Tuscany has to register each entry by SMS, at €1, before it drives in.

So ask your carrier to confirm the car is on Florence's permanent list. An NCC car may stop at your door with the driver on board but not park, which is all a drop-off needs. A hire car is cleared by the hotel, which registers the plate within three hours of your entry, and may then stop for 30 minutes.

Florence or Pisa

It depends on where you sleep, not on where the cheaper flight lands.

Read the table by your first night. Florence wins the top four rows, and Siena is 40 km nearer from here than from Pisa. The bottom three go the other way: Lucca is about half the distance from Pisa Airport and Forte dei Marmi less than half.

The counter-argument is the flight. Pisa carried almost 6 million passengers in 2025, and the operator itself describes Florence as the city airport for short and medium-haul flights and Pisa as the one for large volumes and long haul. If the only seat is into Pisa, our Pisa Airport transfers page has that side of the map.

The short runway

Florence has one runway, and it is 1,560 m long.

It lies between Monte Morello and the A11, so landings almost always come in from one direction, with 1,455 m of landing distance. The other direction offers 977 m and is closed to commercial landings. A tailwind above about 10 knots brings go-arounds and diversions, about 1,000 of them in a single year by the operator's count, and fog sends flights to Pisa or to airports in other regions.

A 2,200 m replacement runway is in the airport's Masterplan 2035. Until it exists, give a same-day connection out of Florence some slack, and keep your carrier's chat open on a windy day.

South to Siena and the Chianti

This is where the car stops being a convenience.

The Siena run leaves the airport over the Ponte all'Indiano viaduct, takes 8.1 km of the A1 and then the Firenze-Siena link for 54.9 km, a road with no toll station: 78 km in all and about 1h 16min in free-flowing traffic. Siena's ZTL is switched on all day, every day; NCC cars and taxis on its permanent list drive in, and any other registers the entry online. For Greve the last 5.1 km are on the SR222, the Chiantigiana.

The airport's own guide lists the tram into Florence and a coach to Pisa, and nothing towards Siena or the Chianti. The public route to Siena is the tram to Santa Maria Novella, then a direct train of 1h 27min to 1h 38min for €10.80, or the 131R bus in 1h 15min. Both thin out on Sundays, to 9 direct trains and 9 buses, and the timetable for Saturday 17 October 2026 shows no direct train at all.

West to Lucca and the Versilia

The A11 starts beside the terminal and does most of the work.

Lucca is 65.8 km of motorway to the Lucca Est exit, 69 km and about 47 minutes door to door in free flow, and its historic centre is a camera-gated ZTL. Forte dei Marmi is 100 km, with a motorway toll of €9.30 for a car to the Versilia exit; the run to the Pisa exit costs €8.00. The railway alternative ends at a station in Querceta, about 4 km from the middle of Forte dei Marmi, and only 8 to 10 trains a day run there direct from Florence.