car rental Florence

Probably a hundred people have reported, just on this forum in the last couple of years, receiving at least one of the $125 fines for driving into the center of Florence (the record here so far is $1,250 for 10 Florence ZTL violations in one trip. The city of Florence hands out these fines at the rate of one every minute or so, I kid you not.You'll want to read this why you don't want to drive into Florence

Try south- see if it is out of the ZTL zones. You don't want to try downtown-even with a good map it can be tricky getting in and out of there.

Thanks. I plan to pick up car after checking out of hotel to drive to Siena. South sounds like a good idea. Will try to find more about it.

It will be in your best interest to be more precise than "just stay south." You need to know where the ZTL's are and there's only one way to know that: here's the map of the Florence ZTL's--as you can see, there's a big ZTL south of the Arno, if the car rental pickup location is in that zone, it will cost you, it's an automatic camera system and they'll photo your car license as you drive out.

I'm so confused. I don't intend to drive in Florence at all. But if I pick up the car in the ZTL and then drive out, I would get a ticket. Then what's the sense of the rental offices located in the ZTL? Seems kind of catch-22. Also, what's the meaning of the different level of ZTL, A, B, C, etc? I'm simply trying to avoid the extra charge at the airport location.

Julie - The yellow streets within the ZTLs are the ones you can drive. If you look at zone D, there's one street near the river that is yellow. That's the Borgo Ognissanti which is where most of the rental locations listed as "downtown". You need to drive straight out from there and then cross the river to be free of the ZTLs.

Thanks Doug and Kent. I feel much better. Will pick up car near Borgo Ognissanti (best selection and price)and immediately follow the route outlined to get out of town.

Sometimes you get value for paying extra to pick up the car at the airport and Florence is one of those places--what you get by paying extra is the peace of mind that 9 months after your trip you won't get one or more ZTL fines as a souvenir of your trip. Once you get too close to the ZTL's, it's difficult to know if you drove past one ZTL camera or six of them. Why not pay a little more for peace of mind, since it's well known that trying to mess with the ZTL has cost a lot of people?

Julie- This is a map of the downtown area of Florence. Florence is much more than what is on this map, and there could be other locations to pick up a rental car farther out. The whole city of Florence is not on this map...but the most popular, visited area of Florence is represented here. I know it is overwhelming, and I don't know where the car pick up locations are. Probably any locations listed as downtown is in the ztl, but where are the "south" locations? Maybe check those out and see if you can avoid going into the downtown area all together. (It is kinda messy to drive in Florence...really. If you could get your car on the outskirts it would be better all the way around. My husband would probably pay extra to pick it up at the airport just to avoid driving out of downtown Florence...and he has driven there before. Once your out of Florence, driving is wonderful)