Bologna to Florence with a private driver

When the car wins, and when the train does

Let us start with the part nobody usually writes. If you travel alone, with hand luggage, from central Bologna to central Florence at a busy hour, the Frecciarossa is unbeatable: thirty-seven minutes, and you walk to the station. In that case we will say so.

The car wins when one of these enters the picture:

• Door to door. It does not start at a station and does not end at one: it starts at your address and ends at the hotel, the villa in the hills, the company on the ring road.
• Luggage. Two large cases each on a crowded train is a practical problem. In a car they go in the boot and nobody touches them again.
• A group or a family. The price is per car, not per person: for four people the comparison with four tickets changes considerably.
• Awkward hours. A flight landing in Bologna at half past midnight, a dinner that runs late, a five a.m. departure: high-speed rail is not running then.
• More than one stop. If you need to break the journey — an outlet, a winery, a meeting on the way — the train will not do it.

The journey: an hour and a quarter of Apennines

You cross the Apennines on the A1, along the Variante di Valico: long tunnels and high viaducts on a modern alignment that cut a good deal off the old road. In normal traffic it is 75 to 90 minutes centre to centre; on summer weekends and return days it stretches.

When you book we tell you the departure time we recommend in order to arrive on time, calculated for that hour of the day and not for an empty road. If there are roadworks open on the mountain section we flag it beforehand, not while we are sitting in the queue.

Florence’s ZTL, and where you actually get out

The historic centre of Florence is a large, camera-enforced limited traffic zone. This is where most misunderstandings start, so we will be plain: a licensed chauffeur car may enter the ZTL to take a client to a hotel that has registered the number plate, but it cannot drive around freely in the centre or park where it likes.

How we work: give us the name and exact address of the hotel when you book. If it sits inside the ZTL we arrange the plate authorisation ourselves; if that is not possible we set you down at the nearest legitimate point and the driver walks you in with the luggage. Under no circumstances does a fine you did not know about reach you weeks later.

Florence for the day, with the car at your disposal

The most frequent request on this route is not the transfer alone: it is the day. Leave Bologna in the morning, keep car and driver at your disposal, come back in the evening at the hour you choose.

It is what you want when there are several appointments in the city, when you are hosting guests who do not know Italy, or simply when you would rather not think in terms of return times. It can be combined with a stop elsewhere in Tuscany — Siena, Chianti, Forte dei Marmi — and we quote on the programme, not by the kilometre.

If you are travelling for work, the corporate terms, open account and electronic invoicing included, are on the business page.

What it costs

A fixed fare, agreed before departure. It covers fuel, motorway tolls, parking and VAT, and it is per car, not per person.

Other destinations are in the full list of routes. If you start from Marconi airport the price does not change: airport, city and station count as one another on long routes.