Hop on hop off Florence: bus tour tickets, prices, routes and who it really suits

The Florence hop on hop off bus costs from €29 on the official site for the 24-hour option and, at the time of checking, starts at €19.55 on GetYourGuide and €29 on Tiqets; the durations available are 24, 48 and 72 hours. Before buying it, though, you need to know something no platform puts in large type: the buses do not enter the ZTL, which means they do not reach the Duomo, the Uffizi or Piazza della Signoria. This page explains where the bus actually goes, how often it runs and when the €2.00 city ticket is the better buy.

Why a sightseeing bus is of limited use in Florence

The historic centre is a limited traffic zone (sectors A, B, O) and largely pedestrian. Sightseeing buses cannot cross it: the stops are all around the perimeter — Santa Maria Novella station, Fortezza da Basso, the riverside roads, Piazza della Libertà, Piazzale Michelangelo.

And the centre of Florence is small. It is a ten-minute walk from the station to the Duomo, five from the Duomo to Piazza della Signoria, three from the Signoria to Ponte Vecchio. The whole rectangle of major monuments can be crossed on foot in twenty minutes, and in plenty of places a bus stuck in traffic on the avenues is slower than walking.

So the real value of the ticket lies elsewhere: the climb to Piazzale Michelangelo, the trip to Fiesole on line B and the onboard audio guide. For everything else, you walk.

The two routes and the stops

The operator lists 44 stops across the two routes. There is one ticket and it is valid on both.

Line A is the one almost everyone buys: it loops the centre and climbs to Piazzale Michelangelo, which remains the stop with the best value-for-effort ratio on the whole network. Line B is the only genuine tourist reason for a 48 or 72-hour ticket: Fiesole is an Etruscan-Roman hill town with an archaeological theatre and a view of Florence quite different from the one at the Piazzale.

Timetables and frequencies: the weak point

This is where the service often disappoints, and it is worth knowing beforehand.

The operator publishes a single timetable, valid “every day”: there is no summer schedule and no winter one, and the more generous frequencies quoted around the web for the warm months are not backed by any official document. In the official PDF, line A leaves Largo Alinari at 9:00 and Piazzale Galileo at 9:42, with last departures at 17:45 and 18:27 respectively and a frequency of 25 minutes; line B leaves Piazzale Galileo at 11:00, last departure at 16:00, and runs every 60 minutes. Either way the service winds up around 19:00 on line A and 18:00 on line B.

A twenty-five minute wait on the main line and an hour on the Fiesole line are the real weakness of the product: miss two buses and you have burned the afternoon.

One more limitation to keep in mind: from November to the end of March line B does not run on weekdays, barring exceptions. Anyone buying a 48-hour ticket in winter with Fiesole in mind risks paying for a route that is not running that day.

Prices: official and platforms

Platform prices are those recorded at the time of checking and change with the date and the duration you pick: the comparison above updates from the partner feeds. The service operator now sits under Busitalia/FS, so you may see the City Sightseeing brand alongside the railway group’s: it is the same service.

Validity is counted from the first boarding, not from purchase: a 24-hour ticket activated on Monday at 10:00 expires on Tuesday at 10:00. Buying online skips no queue — the buses have no turnstiles — but it locks in the price and, on Tiqets, gives you free cancellation up to 24 hours before.

What is included (and what is not)

Included: an onboard audio guide in eight languages, the operator’s app with a bus tracker and some walking itineraries, and onboard Wi-Fi. The physical offices are at via Cavour 39r (10:00–17:00) and at Santa Maria Novella station (7:30–15:00).

Not included: no museum admission at all. If you need a ticket for the Uffizi Gallery, the Duomo or the Accademia, those are separate purchases — you will find them compared on the Florence tickets page.

The €2.00 alternative: buses 12 and 13

If all you want is to get up to the Piazzale, the cheapest way is city lines 12 and 13: circular in opposite directions, with the 12 also stopping at San Miniato al Monte. The city ticket costs €2.00 and is valid for 90 minutes according to at-bus.it, and it takes about twenty minutes from the station.

The comparison is brutal: two rides on a city ticket cost €4.00, the sightseeing ticket starts at €19.55. A hop on hop off ticket only makes sense if you make at least four or five hops in a day, or if the audio guide and the open-top deck are part of what you are after.

One practical point: the city ticket has to be bought before boarding (at a tobacconist, a newsstand or in the app) and validated straight away; on board it costs more.

Golf carts and e-bikes: the other two formats

The golf cart is the version that goes where the bus cannot: small electric vehicles, admitted to much of the pedestrian area, with a driver-guide and a panoramic tour of about an hour and a half. It costs more than the bus but genuinely solves the problem of getting around the centre.

The e-bike is the opposite: it takes the climb to the Piazzale with a motor and costs little more than a 48-hour ticket, but you have to pedal and it makes no sense in the rain.

The full comparison of the two panoramic formats is on the Piazzale Michelangelo page; walking tours and audio guides are on the Florence tours page.

How it works in practice, from booking to boarding

There are no assigned seats and no time slot to choose: you buy a ticket for a date, turn up at any stop and get on. Staff scan the code on your phone on board, and that is when validity starts.

Two habits that save a wasted day. Start from a terminus, not from a stop halfway round: in high season the buses arrive with the upper deck already full, and the upper deck is the only part worth the price. And pick the right direction: line A is best done once all the way round with the audio guide running, and only then used for hopping, otherwise you lose half the commentary.

Finally, remember that the hours are counted from the first boarding, not from the purchase: if you buy the ticket in the evening and board the next morning, you have lost nothing. It is the one piece of flexibility this product allows.

Who it genuinely suits

The Florence hop on hop off ticket pays off in four specific situations.

Reduced mobility. The centre is stone, uphill and short on pavement: being able to get on and off a vehicle with an audio guide changes the day.

Families with tired children. The open-top bus is a seated break that works, and the upper deck is the only free high viewpoint after five hours of museums.

A rainy day. With the lower deck covered and the audio guide on, a full loop of line A is an hour spent dry and well.

Stays of three days or more with Fiesole on the list, in season: this is the case where the 48 or 72-hour ticket gives back what it costs.

It does not pay off if you are here for a single day and want to see the Duomo, the Uffizi and the Accademia: all three are inside the ZTL, which is exactly where the bus does not go. In that case your time is better spent walking, and your budget on admission tickets.

The hop on hop off bus in Florence is not a scam: it is an honest product sold in a city that does not need it for the centre. Buy it for the Piazzale, for Fiesole, for the rain or for tired legs — and for everything else look at things to do in Florence and walk.