Map of Pisa and Florence

The Touring Club Italiano Road Atlas is good and The Touring Club Italiano Regional Maps are also good for planning and driving. The Trek Tools web site has a good selection of city maps.

Just as a note of caution. Make sure the maps show the TLZones or you will get a very unpleasant surprise about six months or so after you return. Especially true for Florence.

This is a site that has the Restricted Traffic Zone in it for Florence http://www.garageexcelsiorfirenze.it/ztl.pdf

GPS is great but having a paper map is really handy. I'm sure our Garmon GPS took us down some roads that no American has ever taveled before :>). More than once we thought we were on someone's driveway! Also, we had issues with one way streets and construction detours.
I hope you know that you need to purchase the European module for your GPS.... unless you use the one in the rental car.

So I am looking at the map of ZTL's , can you get to the florence train station without going through one? I thought you could.

On the GPS, he has lived over there for a year and said their GPS has not failed them yet, so I assume it is programed for the area.

" so I assume " Danger, my friend. You DO NOT want to drive in Florence.

I've had a couple of gps's in Florence and neither showed the ztl's (probably because the streets are, in fact, useable and the gps doesn't care if you're authorized to use them or not). The only way in without bumping a ztl is to approach from the northwest and hug the tracks/station once you're south of either Roselli or Strozzi. Once you're more than a block from the station perimeter (past the places to turn in the car), you're in deep kimchi.

"...you're in deep kimchi." There are worse things ;-) Also, I would suggest 'driving' the roads in Google Street View; that's a huge help! Of course, you could also print maps from online...(If you're not familiar with Google Street View, send me a PM) I'm going to pile on about the ZTLs - you do NOT want to mess with them. Be sure your info is the most up-to-date; they changed a bit in Florence recently, for instance (according to one of our Helpful Helpliners). I'm with you about the paper maps, too ;-)

So you've figured out that you won't be driving in Florence (you don't need to it is a fabulous city for walking!). I have heard that the tickets are very expensive, and you don't get them until you get home! In answer to your original query about maps, I LOVED my MapEasy's Guidemap to Florence! Not a typical map, it is a beautiful and extremely useful map printed on waterproof paper, with lovely drawings of every place you would want to go in the city. You can recognize buildings pictured on the map, and it includes descriptions and tourist information, even store names. We used it all over the city and it was extremely handy, and even helped us identify some of our photographs later. Another map we found quite useful was Google Earth satellite maps. We printed out several in advance to help us find our way from the train station to our B&B. We walked right to it! I hope you have time for a little trip to Siena! It was fantastic. Jan

OK, so according to everything I have read, the Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence, including the underground parking garage is not in the DMZ. ( I know it is not really called that, but it sees appropriate) Google maps has me going from Pisa coming in from the northwest on autostrada firenze mare and coming in on villa luigi alammani (or something like that) that hugs the west or left side of the train station. and going out the the right side on viale filepe strozzi and circling back around and catching the autostrada back. I have spent the better part of today pouring over maps comparing the google maps to the DMZ maps and the route is out of the do not enter stuff. What do you think?

You broke the code. Now quit worrying about it.

Its like playing with fire. You know that you might get burnt but you make adjustments and hope that it won't happen. The difference is when things go out of control. Let me just say that I have driven in Florence, several times. It is never something I enjoy. What you cannot predict is road closures for whatever reason, and I remember the traffic near SMN (I did it at the tail of the morning rush hour once) and it can be incredibly easy to wind up where you don't expect. I remember being convinced that I was on one road heading south when I discovered I was on the perpendicular one heading east. It appears that you are aware of the consequences of a small error and have weighed up the pluses and minuses. I say go for it, and don't bother to hold your breath. You can't hold it for 18 months.