Florence: new short lets banned in the old city

New short tourist lets are banned in the UNESCO core of Florence, zone A1, since May 31, 2025, and the June 4, 2026 council decision extended the limits to zones A3 and A4 with a minimum floor area of 28 square meters.

What you can no longer book, and what you still can

Only new lets are banned: the short tourist lets already registered before May 31, 2025 carry on trading. That is why the listings do not empty out and why the rule is invisible to most visitors.

Zone A1 is the UNESCO area, closed to new short lets since May 31, 2025. On June 4, 2026 the city council extended the limits to zones A3 and A4: Campo di Marte, San Jacopino, Gavinana, Pignoncino, Paolo Uccello, Statuto, Rifredi, Liberta, Oberdan, Savonarola, Bronzino, Pier Vettori, Fonderia and Petrarca.

The same decision fixed a minimum floor area of 28 square meters for a new let, an authorization lasting 5 years, and fines from €1,000¹ to €10,000¹. Owners who keep their residence in the property are exempt. The measure is under administrative litigation, so check the state of play before you rely on it.

The tax: 3.50 to 8.00, capped at 7 nights

Florence charges €3.50 per person per night in a one star hotel, €4.50 at two stars, €6.00 at three, €7.00 at four and €8.00 at five, for a maximum of 7 consecutive nights, under council decision 535² of December 10, 2024, in force since February 1, 2025.

Outside hotels: B&Bs, rooms for rent, holiday houses and apartments and tourist lets pay €6.00, historic residences €7.00, youth hostels and case per ferie €4.00, campsites €3.50, residences €4.50 to €7.00 by key rating, farm stays €3.50 to €8.00 by sunflower rating, aparthotels €3.50 to €8.00 by star.

The 7 night cap is short by Italian standards, so a stay of two weeks in one property is charged for the first week and nothing after it.

What the 2025 increase actually changed

The February 2025 revision added €0.50 to a narrow group only: non hotel accommodation housed in ordinary residential buildings, and tourist lets. Hotels were not touched.

That detail explains a common confusion. A traveler who stayed in a Florence apartment in 2024 and again in 2025 saw the line go from €5.50 to €6.00 and concluded that the city had raised the tax across the board. It had not.

The full text of the decision was extracted from the official PDF and matches the city's own service page on both the start date and the increase.

Six categories of guest pay nothing

Exemptions cover under 12s, students of the University of Florence, day hospital patients, up to 2 companions for each hospital inpatient, police and civil protection personnel on duty, and employees of the property staying there for work.

Two of those are worth planning around. A family with children under 12 pays the tax only for the adults, which on a week in a four star is a real sum. Anyone accompanying a patient should say so at check in, because the exemption is not applied automatically.

Our source here is a single primary page, and the complete list lives in the municipal regulation, which we have not read end to end. Treat this as the verified subset rather than the whole. More at the tourist tax across Italy, Florence and getting to Florence.

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