Tuscan capital to become first Italian city to restrict short lets in residential areas outside city centre.
Florence is pressing ahead with its crackdown on short-term tourist rentals, extending restrictions to nine residential neighbourhoods outside the city’s historic centre.
The municipal council approved the measure on Tuesday, ahead of a full council vote on 4 June, expected to pass easily. The rules would come into force on 20 June.
The city’s centre-left mayor Sara Funaro had confirmed the move earlier this month after Tuscany’s regional administrative tribunal (TAR) rejected a spate of legal challenges brought by operators, trade associations and citizens opposed to the existing regulations.
Those rules, introduced a year earlier, had already banned new short-term tourist lettings within the UNESCO-listed historic centre and imposed a range of obligations on landlords.
Tuesday’s resolution substantially widens that perimeter and will restrict the authorisation of new short-let tourist accommodation.
Which areas will be affected?
The nine areas now covered are Campo di Marte, San Jacopino, Gavinana, Pignoncino e Paolo Uccello, Statuto e Rifredi, Libertà, Oberdan e Savonarola, Bronzino e Pier Vettori, and Fonderia e Petrarca.
Together they contain roughly 67,780 homes – almost twice the 35,593 in the historic centre – spread across more than 500 streets.
Growth in some zones has been especially rapid: Funaro noted that in areas such as Pignoncino the number of short lets had risen by more than 90 per cent.
The selection was informed by research commissioned from Rome’s La Sapienza university which examined the ratio of tourist lettings to residents and the pace of growth in each district.
New rules
In the affected zones no new short-term tourist lettings may open. Existing operators must comply with a detailed set of requirements by 31 May 2028, the end of a three-year moratorium provided for under a 2025 regional tourism law.
These include mandatory registration on the municipal short-let register, a five-year authorisation tied to both owner and property (which lapses on sale), minimum floor areas of 28 square metres per dwelling, single bedrooms of at least nine square metres and double rooms of at least 14, and the display of the national CIN identifier introduced across Italy in 2024.
Fines for non-compliance range from €1,000 to €10,000, with authorisation withdrawal possible after three infringements or proven evasion of the tourist tax.
The ban on keybox installations on building facades, in force since February 2025, continues alongside the new measures.
When the moratorium ends and new authorisations can be issued, Funaro said the council would give priority to small private owners over commercial operators, drawing a distinction between a family renting out a spare flat to supplement income and investors running property on a professional basis.
Backlash
Lorenzo Fagnoni, president of Property Managers Italia, argued that the earlier restrictions had neither brought residents back to the centre nor reduced rents, and that further tightening risked creating economic disruption without resolving the underlying problem.
Florence was the first Italian city to impose a blanket ban on new short lets within a UNESCO area, and Funaro has suggested the approach could serve as a model for other municipalities pending national legislation.
“The goal of this measure is clear: to continue our commitment to protecting residential accommodation and ensuring a sustainable balance between tourism and the daily lives of residents”, Funaro stated, adding: “We are not waging a “war” against anyone; instead, we are working to protect our city, and we will continue to do so.”
