Florence: what to see and whether to move there

What the city runs on and who it suits

Florence is small: roughly 360,000 people in the commune and about a million in the wider area. Three things pay the bills. Tourism first - the city logged over 4.7 million arrivals and around 11.5 million overnight stays in 2025, both up about ten percent on the year before. Then luxury and leather: the big fashion houses run plants and offices in a belt from Scandicci to Pontassieve, alongside hundreds of small workshops. Then education and science: the University of Florence, the Sesto Fiorentino campus, pharma, the Careggi hospital complex, and an unusually large American study-abroad industry.

The people who move here are mid-career remote workers, restorers and artists, retirees with passive income, second-home buyers in Tuscany, and staff of international schools and study programmes. The people who struggle are those hoping to build a career inside the city. The local job market is narrow, salaries are mid-range by Italian standards and low by international ones, and English carries you through the tourist and academic bubble but almost nowhere else. Florence rewards externally funded lives and is unkind to those looking for local income.

Neighbourhoods: where newcomers actually live

The centro storico is the shop window and the least practical place to live in: noise, crowds, the ZTL driving restriction, walk-up buildings and heritage obligations on repairs. Oltrarno, San Frediano and Santo Spirito are where most long-stay foreigners end up - workshops, decent bars, though Santo Spirito gets loud at night. San Niccolò is quiet and expensive. Santa Croce is convenient but turns into a student bar strip after dark.

For families, look at Le Cure, Campo di Marte and Coverciano: 20th-century buildings, schools, parking, twenty minutes on foot or by bus to the centre. Novoli and Rifredi are cheaper, close to university buildings and the courts, and architecturally dull. Isolotto across the river is the best value-to-greenery trade. Fiesole and Settignano in the hills are beautiful, pricey and impractical without a car. The cheapest options sit along the tram lines in Scandicci and Sesto Fiorentino.

There are no dangerous districts in any serious sense. The real irritations are pickpockets around the Duomo and Santa Maria Novella station, the station area and Cascine park late at night, and pushy street sellers. That is discomfort, not danger.

What it costs to live here

Rent dominates, and it has been distorted by short-term letting. From 31 May 2025 the city froze new tourist-rental registrations in the UNESCO historic core, and in May 2026 it extended the restriction far beyond it, covering more than a hundred thousand residential units. Good news for tenants in principle, but the effect will take years: long-term supply is still tight, and landlords routinely ask for proof of income and a two- to three-month deposit.

A single person without expensive habits needs roughly 1,800-2,500 euros a month including rent; a couple, 2,800-3,500. Healthcare runs on two tiers: once registered with the SSN, basic care is close to free, but specialist waits are long and almost everyone pays privately for something.

Practicalities: transport, climate, language, money

Florence is genuinely walkable - you can cross the centre in half an hour. There is no metro, but there are tram lines including a direct link to Peretola airport, plus a dense bus network. A car in the centre is mostly a liability: camera-enforced ZTL fines, paid parking, narrow streets. Rail makes up for it - Bologna in 35 minutes, Rome and Milan in roughly one and a half to two hours by high-speed train. Long-haul flights go via Pisa or Bologna.

The climate is basin climate: over 35 degrees with high humidity and no wind in summer, damp and raw at around five degrees in winter. April, May, late September and October are the good months. August empties of locals, fills with visitors, and many businesses shut.

Language: English is fine in cafes, museums and study programmes, and useless at the immigration office, the tax office or with a plumber. Italian at B1 changes daily life dramatically. Internet is solid, fibre reaches most neighbourhoods, mobile plans are cheap. Before a bank account or almost any contract you need a codice fiscale, then the SPID digital identity, without which public services are effectively closed. Many newcomers keep a European neobank account and open an Italian one only for rent and utilities.

Moving and legal status

Florence offers no special immigration terms; the general rules of Italy apply. The main routes for non-EU nationals are the digital nomad visa for highly qualified remote workers, with an income threshold around 28,000 euros a year; the elective residency visa for people living on passive income, roughly from 32,000 euros for one applicant and about 38,000 for a couple, with no work permitted; study visas; family reunification; salaried work under the annual decreto flussi quotas; and the investor visa at 250,000 euros into an innovative startup, 500,000 into an Italian company, 1 million as a philanthropic donation or 2 million in government bonds.

The sequence is the same in every case: enter on the visa, apply for the permesso di soggiorno within eight working days, renew, reach long-term resident status after five years, and become eligible to apply for citizenship after ten years of residence with Italian at B1. Citizenship by descent was sharply narrowed in 2025 and now generally requires a parent or grandparent born in Italy. Taxes are high, but new residents can look at the impatriati regime and the flat tax for wealthy arrivals, raised to 300,000 euros a year from 2026. See our residence permits, nomad visa and tax sections. Rules change often - confirm with the consulate before filing.

Is it worth living here

Florence works for people whose income does not depend on the local market and who value cultural density every single day. You pay for that density three times over: in rent, in patience with crowds, and in patience with bureaucracy.

The honest downsides. The city is very small, and after a year the social circle closes and the stage-set feeling grows. The tourist flow leaves the centre little air for about nine months a year. Summer is physically punishing. The job market is narrow, salaries lag rents, and the rental market is still distorted by short-term letting even as the city tries to unwind it. You will end up privately topping up healthcare and schooling.

Good fit: remote workers and freelancers billing outside Italy, retirees with real passive income, people coming to study restoration, art history or cooking. Bad fit: anyone chasing career growth, cheap living, or the energy of a large city. The sensible move is to rent short-term for one full year, July and January included, and decide after that.