Taking a bus to Florence

Arriving in Florence by coach or inter-city bus (in Italian: pullman)

The main bus station in Florence is just southwest of the train station (as you're exiting the station, at the far corner of the piazza to your right) at Via S. Caterina da Siena 17R.

The region is actually served by a number of different, overlapping bus services—so if you're going to, say, Siena, you can ride with either SITA (www.sitabus.it) or Tra.in (www.trainspa.it).

When to take a bus to Florence

Taking a bus to Florence is, in most cases, a distant second choice to taking the train, which is (usually) faster, more frequent, and more reliable for roughly the same price.

There are two exceptions for popular destinations within Tuscany: Siena and San Gimignano.

It make a bit more sense to travel by bus between Florence and Siena only because the Siena train station is way down in the valley below town, requiring a city bus to get up to the historic center, whereas Siena's bus station is on Via Tozzi, near the north end of the center just to the east of the stadium (the ticket office is in an underground passage below La Lizza, the northern extension of Via Tozzi, tel. 0577-204-246, www.sitabus.it and www.trainspa.it).

San Gimignano doesn't even have a train station—the nearest one is in the town of Poggibonsi (a 10 to 20–minute bus ride from San Gimignano). What's more, the buses between Florence and Poggibonsi are actually faster (50 min.) than the trains (60 min.—or 75 min. for those requiring a change in Empoli).

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