how is florence laid out?
 

i'm having difficulty putting florence into a context i can understand. it seems to look small on maps.

for example: i never thought rome was as vast as it was. all the map studying didn't prepare me for how big the city was. for how unwalkable it was from one site to another. where as i never realised how small and walkable paris turned out to be.

so how does florence work?

I took the bus twice in Florence, and it wasn't necessary either time. Florence is much more compact than either Paris or Rome.

I am surprised by how you view Paris and Rome differently. For me it would seem unworkable to walk from Montparnasse to Montmartre, but it would be quite possible to walk from Vatican to the Colosseum.

We also found Rome very walkable for the major sights.

I studied my maps of Florence quite diligently before we went and was very surprised at how compact the city really is. It was much smaller than it appeared on my maps and we walked everywhere, only taking a cab to Fiesole and Piazzelle Michaelangelo.

Agreed that Rome is very walkable - unless you're trying to walk in from a hotel in hell and gone. I found it much more convenient than Paris - were we rode the Metro quite a bit. The historic center of Florence is tiny - nothing like either Rome or Paris.

Hi UC,

The historic area of Florence is very walkable.

We did take the bus to Pzza Michaelangelo and again to Fiesole, but otherwise, walked.

Busroutes and a map of Florence are at http://www.ataf.net/Default_EN.asp

((I))

admittedly, i did use the metro more in paris to get from the hotel to where i wanted to go and then walked until i went back to the hotel w/ the metro. in roma, the metro just didn't help me. and we stayed in campo di fiori and the walk to the colosseum was pretty good...maybe i need to rethink my rome location. could also be that i got a hair lost on some of those roads...truth be told ;)

regarding florence, it's good to know that it's represented well on the map. i guess the city scale sometime is tough to realise until you actually go somewhere.

I don't think that Rome is very walkable - I've always found that distances are greater than they look on a map. On my first few visits I tried to walk everywhere & regretted it (esp. walking to the Vatican), being too tired to care about seeing things when I got there. So on our last couple of trips we've got ourselves acquainted with the bus system & found it very useful. There is even a tiny bus which goes right through the centro storico, including Campo di Fiore. I agree that the metro isn't much use as it doesn't go near most of the tourist sights, except the Colisseum.

Florence was very easy to understand and walk. We took a cab just twice late at night because our feet were sore and it was cold (we weren't prepared for it). Otherwise, we would have walked everywhere during our 5 day stay.