Florence is famously walkable. The historic centre fits inside a square mile, every big sight is a 10 minute stroll from the next, and locals will tell you to ditch the wheels and use your feet. So why on earth would you book a hop-on hop-off bus?
Because the bus does the one thing walking can’t. It hauls you up to Piazzale Michelangelo for the postcard view without a 30 minute uphill slog, and then it takes you out to Fiesole, the hilltop town the day-trippers all skip. The flat city loop is the part most people overrate. The hill loop is the part nobody talks about, and it’s the actual reason to buy the ticket.
- In a Hurry? My Top Picks
- What You Actually Get For The Money
- The Two Routes Broken Down
- Where To Board (And Where Not To)
- Is It Worth It?
- The Tours Worth Booking
- 1. Florence Hop-on Hop-off Bus Tour: 24, 48 or 72-Hour Ticket:
- 2. City Sightseeing Florence Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour:
- 3. Florence Eco-Friendly Golf Cart City Tour:
- Combining The Bus With Other Florence Sights
- Practical Tips From People Who’ve Ridden It
- Best Time of Year For The Bus
- What Skipping The Bus Looks Like
- Adding A Tuscany Day Trip
- Other Florence Reads That Pair With This
In a Hurry? My Top Picks
- Best for first-timers: Florence Hop-on Hop-off Bus 24/48/72-Hour Ticket from $24. The flagship City Sightseeing route with both the city loop and the Fiesole loop included.
- Best alt for the hill view only: City Sightseeing Florence on Viator from $25. Same operator, different booking platform if GetYourGuide is sold out.
- Skip the bus entirely: Florence Eco-Friendly Golf Cart City Tour from $67. Smaller, faster, gets into pedestrian streets the bus can’t touch.
What You Actually Get For The Money
The Florence service is run by City Sightseeing, the same red-bus company you’ve probably already ridden in Rome, Barcelona, or London. There is one operator. There is no “competing” hop-on hop-off in Florence. Anything you book on GetYourGuide, Viator, or Tiqets ends up on the same buses, with the same routes, same audio, same drivers. The price differs by a dollar or two between platforms and that’s it.
Tickets come in three flavours: 24, 48, or 72 hours. The clock starts when you scan your voucher with the driver on your first ride, not at midnight. So if you board at 2pm Tuesday, your 24-hour ticket runs until 2pm Wednesday. The 48-hour is the sweet spot for most visitors and it’s only a couple of euros more than the 24-hour.
Two routes come with the ticket. Line A is the city loop, about 60 minutes door to door, running every 25 minutes from 9am to nearly 6pm. Line B is the Fiesole loop, about 120 minutes for a full circuit, but it only runs hourly and stops at 4pm. Plan the Fiesole leg early in your day. Miss the 4pm last bus from Fiesole and you’re paying €25 in a taxi back into town.
Both routes share a few city stops, so you can hop between them at the central interchanges without buying a separate fare. The Sightseeing Experience app shows live bus positions, which is genuinely useful in summer when buses run late from Arno traffic. Download it before you board, not when you’re already standing in the heat.
The Two Routes Broken Down
Line A starts at Largo Alinari near Santa Maria Novella station, which is where 80% of riders board because that’s where the trains arrive. The loop swings past the Duomo, around to Santa Croce, drops along the Arno, crosses Ponte alle Grazie to the south bank, climbs to Piazzale Michelangelo for the panorama, then comes back via Pitti Palace and Ponte Vecchio.
The Piazzale Michelangelo stop is the main reason to ride Line A. Walking up there from the city is a 25-minute climb up uneven steps in full sun, and after a morning of museum walking you will not enjoy it. The bus drops you at the top, you spend 20 minutes shooting the panorama, and you hop back on the next bus down. That’s the move.
Line B is the Fiesole route. It runs from the same central area, climbs north out of Florence through cypress-lined roads, and loops around the hilltop town of Fiesole before returning. Fiesole is where wealthy Florentines kept summer villas in the Renaissance. There’s a Roman theatre, an Etruscan museum, and a viewpoint that looks straight back over Florence in the bowl below. Most tourists never go because it’s a 30 minute city bus ride from Florence and feels like a hassle. The hop-on hop-off solves that.
I’d give Fiesole 90 minutes minimum on the ground. If you only have 60, skip it. The roundtrip eats most of your time and you won’t see the theatre.
Where To Board (And Where Not To)
There are about 20 stops between the two lines. The big ones are Largo Alinari (near the train station), Piazza San Marco, Duomo, Santa Croce, Piazzale Michelangelo, Pitti Palace, and the Fiesole terminus. You buy a ticket once and can hop on at any stop along the route.
Buy your ticket online before you arrive. Don’t queue at the bus to pay. The driver can sell tickets but it slows the boarding for everyone, and on a busy summer afternoon a single transaction can hold a bus for five minutes. Show up with a digital voucher on your phone and you walk straight on.
One thing the operators don’t advertise loudly: traffic in central Florence on a Saturday afternoon is brutal. The bus genuinely takes longer than walking on weekends between 11am and 4pm, especially around Piazza della Stazione. If you ride midday on a weekend, get off at the closest stop to your destination and walk the rest.
Is It Worth It?
It depends on what kind of Florence trip you’re running.
If you’re here for two days and want a fast orientation, plus the Piazzale Michelangelo viewpoint and Fiesole, the 48-hour ticket pays for itself. The bus saves you the Piazzale climb and gives you a Fiesole option you’d otherwise skip. That’s $30-ish well spent.
If you’re here for four or five days and you’re a slow traveller who likes wandering, skip it. Florence is too compact for a hop-on hop-off to add much. You’ll cover the centre on foot in two mornings, and a Piazzale taxi each way costs less than the ticket.
If you’re travelling with people who can’t walk far, or with a stroller, the bus becomes a lifeline. There’s no shame in that. I’ve watched parents do whole afternoons on the upper deck with sleeping toddlers and it works.
The thing I’d warn against: don’t buy this expecting a guided tour. The audio commentary cuts out around mid-afternoon on most days and never comes back, the script is shallow, and several stops have no commentary at all. If you want history with your sightseeing, do a real walking tour. The bus is transport plus a viewpoint, not a lesson.
The Tours Worth Booking
Three options worth booking, in order. The flagship is the obvious one for most visitors. The Viator listing is the same product on a different platform, useful if the GYG version sells out. The golf cart tour is the wildcard if you want a more personal experience and don’t mind paying double.
1. Florence Hop-on Hop-off Bus Tour: 24, 48 or 72-Hour Ticket: $24
This is the booking nearly everyone should make. Pick 48 hours unless you’re on a tight day-trip. Our full review of the 24/48/72-hour ticket goes through the audio quirks and which deck to sit on for the best photos.
2. City Sightseeing Florence Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour: $25
Identical product, different booking platform. The Viator pricing fluctuates and sometimes runs $1-2 cheaper than the GYG version, which over a family of four is worth checking. Same buses, same routes, same drivers.
3. Florence Eco-Friendly Golf Cart City Tour: $67
Different beast. Six-passenger electric carts with a private driver-guide, runs 1 to 1.5 hours, gets into pedestrian streets the bus can’t touch. Pricier but you get a real guide who answers your questions, not a recorded track. Our Florence Vespa tour guide covers similar ground if you’d rather ride pillion than sit in a cart.
Combining The Bus With Other Florence Sights
The bus doesn’t get you into anything. The ticket is transport. So pair it with the entries you actually need.
Top of the list: the Uffizi Gallery. The bus drops you near Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi entrance is a 90-second walk from the stop. Pre-book a timed Uffizi entry for a slot two hours after your morning bus loop ends so you can grab lunch in between.
Same logic for the Accademia for Michelangelo’s David. The Piazza San Marco bus stop is two blocks from the Accademia entrance. The David is the only thing most visitors care about there, so a 60-90 minute timed entry slot fits neatly between bus loops.
Santa Croce is underrated. Most bus passengers ride past without getting off. Don’t. The basilica has the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Rossini, plus a Pazzi Chapel courtyard that’s one of the calmest corners in the city. The current entrance is on the right side of the facade, not the front.
If you bus to Pitti Palace, save energy for the Boboli Gardens behind it. The gardens are a 45 hectare hillside climb so you’ll want fresh legs. The bus also stops near Pitti Palace itself, which is the Medici residence and quieter than the Uffizi if you want art without the queues.
For Florence’s biggest landmark, the Duomo dome climb needs a separate timed entry. The bus stops a 90-second walk from Piazza del Duomo. The dome climb is 463 steps and you have to book the climb specifically, not just cathedral entry.
Practical Tips From People Who’ve Ridden It
A few things I wish someone had told me before my first bus loop:
Sit on the upper deck. The whole point is the open-top view. The lower deck is air-conditioned but you might as well be on a regular city bus. The exception is rain or peak summer heat at noon.
Don’t trust the audio. The earphones at each seat work about half the time. Bring your own AirPods and use the bluetooth audio in the Sightseeing Experience app. Or just enjoy the view and skip the commentary.
The 24-hour ticket is a trap unless you’re disciplined. If you board at 11am, your day-one window for Fiesole closes at 4pm (when Line B’s last bus leaves). You will not have time to do both the city loop and Fiesole comfortably in 24 hours unless you start at 9am sharp.
Children under 4 ride free. Children 5-15 are around half price. Bring proof of age, the drivers do check.
The buses don’t run after 6pm. If you want sunset photos at Piazzale Michelangelo, you ride up but you walk or city-bus down. Most riders forget this and end up scrambling at 5:50pm.
Wheelchair access exists but is patchy. Some buses have ramps and a designated wheelchair space, others don’t. Email the operator before booking if this matters to you. Don’t trust the boilerplate “yes” on listing pages.
Best Time of Year For The Bus
April through June is ideal. Mild weather, the upper deck is comfortable, the city isn’t yet overrun. July and August are doable but the upper deck becomes a frying pan from 11am to 4pm. September and October are also great. November through February the bus runs on a reduced schedule and the open-top is pointless in cold rain.
Mid-March is the start of the full season schedule. The Sightseeing Experience app will show whichever frequency is currently running, so check it the morning of your ride.
What Skipping The Bus Looks Like
If you skip the bus, here’s what you replace it with. A Florence sunset walking tour covers the same ground as Line A in a more meaningful way, with a real human pointing things out. Cost is similar to the 48-hour bus, the experience is far better, but you don’t get to Fiesole.
For the Piazzale Michelangelo viewpoint without the bus, take city bus 12 from Santa Maria Novella, which is €1.70 each way and runs more often than the hop-on hop-off. The trick is buying the ticket from a tabacchi shop before you board because city bus drivers don’t sell tickets.
For Fiesole without the hop-on hop-off, the city bus 7 runs from San Marco square to Fiesole every 20 minutes for €1.70. Same deal: buy the ticket at a tabacchi first.
So the real question is: do you want one ticket for two routes, or two separate city bus rides plus a walk to the stops? For most visitors the hop-on hop-off saves enough time that the convenience tax is worth paying. For budget travellers willing to navigate Italian bus apps, the city bus combo is half the price.
Adding A Tuscany Day Trip
The hop-on hop-off is a city tool, not a Tuscany tool. If you want to actually see the rolling hills, vineyards, and hilltop towns Tuscany is famous for, you need a separate day trip.
The classic combo is Siena, San Gimignano, and a Chianti winery, which is a full-day departure from Florence. Read our breakdowns of how to book a Tuscany day trip and the Chianti wineries options if that’s where you’re headed next. Either pairs well with a 48-hour hop-on hop-off ticket: bus on day one for orientation, day trip on day two for the countryside.
If your Tuscany budget extends to Pisa, our guide on visiting the Leaning Tower covers the standalone Pisa option versus the Pisa-on-the-way option. Pisa is included in most Tuscany day trips so you might not need a dedicated trip.
Other Florence Reads That Pair With This
If you’ve got the bus locked in and you’re booking the actual entries, the essential trio is the Uffizi, the Accademia for the David, and a dome climb at the Duomo. The bus drops you at all three. For something a bit different on a day off the bus, the Medici storyteller walk turns the streets the bus rolls past into stories with names attached, and the Florence pasta class runs from a kitchen near a Line A stop.