The best hotels in Florence

How to find, and reserve, the best hotels in Florence in every price range and neighborhood

Booking engines for Florence hotels:
www.venere.com
www.booking.com
www.getaroom.com
www.airbnb.com
www.bedandbreakfast.com
www.hostelworld.com
www.hotelscombined.com

Reid's top 10 Hotels in Florence
1) Pensione Maria Luisa de' Medici [€€]
2) Hotel Torre di Bellosguardo [€€€€]
3) Hotel Palazzo Niccolini al Duomo [€€€€]
4) Residenza del Proconsolo [€€]
5) Hotel de' Lanzi [€€]
6) Hotel Torre Guelfa [€€€]
7) Hotel Monna Lisa [€€€€]
8) Hotel Loggiato dei Serviti [€€€]
9) Hotel Morandi alla Crocetta [€€€]
10) Grand Hotel Cavour [€€€]

ReidsItaly.com Florence Map

» View ENLARGED MAP with all listings

TOURS FROM OUR TRUSTED PARTNERS that include Florence

Intrepid Travel 2011 Italy trips
• Best of Italy (15 days)
• Italy Experience (15 days)
• Classic Italy (21 days)
• Italy Family Adventure (14 days)
• Highlights of Italy (8 days)
• Tuscan Express (7 days)

G Adventures 2011 Italy trips
• Ultimate Italy (13 days)
• Italy Culture and History (9 days)
• The Taste of Tuscany (8 days)
• Venice to Rome Adventure (8 days)
• Italy Family Adventure (10 days)

iExplore Italy trips 2011
• Italy Experience (9 days)
• Italy in Style (9 days)
• Magical Tuscany & Portofino (10 days)
• Tuscan Delights (8 days)
• Splendors of Italy & Southern France (16 days)

Hotels in Florence The city of the Medici, cradle of the Renaissance, and capital of Tuscany has the potential to suck your wallet dry.

Beyond hotels
• B&Bs
• Apartments
• Hostels
• Campgrounds
• Residences
• AgriturismiThat plethora of great museums? Each will cost you a cool €12. Heck, even most of the churches charge admission now.

That's why it's important to find excellent yet inexpensive accommodation.

Finding a reasonably priced place to stay in the throbbing, living heart of it all takes a bit of work. Florence has hundreds of hotels; half of them are overpriced, another third of them are slung into the streets around the train station—nothing wrong with the area, but if I had a choice, I'd stay bang in the bustling heart of the historic center.

The new Florence hotel tax
In July, 2011, Florence began charging a hotel bed tax. This is the city's doing, and it is not a scam. All charges are per person, per night, for all guests over the age of 10 and can be charged for stays of up to 10 days.

In genral, you pay €1 per category rating—hotels are rated by "stars," Residences by "keys," agriturismi by "spighe" (stalks of wheat). So tax on a 3-star hotel would be €3 (per person, per night). A few exceptions:

• Hostels: €1
• B&Bs: €2
• Residenza d'Epoca: €4
• Campgrounds: €1 for 1– to 3-star properties, €2 for 4-star campgrounds

So a couple staying three nights in a four-star room would pay an extra €18.

Some hotels have begun folding this tax into their quoted rates; others tack it on when you go to check out.

There are three ways to find hotels in Florence:

Reid Recommends: My thoroughly subjective list of 20 personal favorite Florence hotels, in all price ranges. When friends or family ask for my advice on where to stay, this is the list I give them. » more
Book online: This is the route I usually go these days. There are several booking engines that have not only excellent collections of hotels in all price ranges (plus non-hotel alternatives, like B&Bs and apartments), but also user reviews, loads of photos, and—amazingly—often lower prices than the hotel itself is charging. ReidsItaly.com has partnered with five of the best of these: Venere.com, Booking.com, GetARoom.com, Hotelscombined.com, and Hostelworld.com (which actually lists more inexpensive hotels than it does hostels)
The Florence tourist office: The official tourism website has a great database of all lodgings in Florence (it's in the "Tourist Information" section). But it is just that: a database. More than 1,300 of entries you have to plow through, and each only contains the bare facts (number of rooms, star category, address, basic amenities offered, contact info). Useful if you have tons of time to research, but not so easy to get a quick overview of the best place available for your needs. » more

Booking sites

note
I've inserted the Booking.com results for Florence in a frame below, but you may want to open it in a separate window instead, to make things like using your browser's "Back" button easier. If you stay on this page, right click to get a browser functions menu for "back" and such.

Booking.com is one of the best hotel booking engines out there, especially for European trips, offering many smaller, mom-and-pop hotels and alternatives such as B&Bs and apartments.

(I just returned from a trip to Sardegna and, though I scoured guidebooks and other online resources, I found five of the six places I ended up staying by using Booking.com.)

You may also want to peruse the offerings at the competitor booking engine Venere.com, as well as at the nifty hotel aggregator HotelsCombined.

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This material was last updated January 2011. All information was accurate at the time.

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The best hotels in Florence

How to find, and reserve, the best hotels in Florence in every price range and neighborhood

There are three ways to find hotels in Florence:

Booking sites

Related pages