Hotel taxi at 04:00 usually beats leaving a car at FLR
For trips longer than a couple of days, frequent Italy travelers rarely talk about using Florence Airport’s official Long-term Parking at T1 at all. On a Rick Steves thread about a 06:00-ish departure from FLR, the poster chose a hotel-arranged taxi from central Florence instead of touching airport parking at 04:00, calling the city “so quiet” at that hour.
This Long-term Parking is an on-airport, official option linked to T1, but regulars on TripAdvisor comparing FLR with Pisa mostly skip over it when planning 3–7 day trips. One traveler weighing airports mentioned delays and crowding at Peretola and treated on-site parking as background noise, not a core part of the plan.
Pricing at official Italian airport long‑stay lots in this region typically sits in the ballpark of €10–€20 per day for multi‑day stays, and FLR’s Long-term Parking tends to track that pattern. When you start multiplying that by 5–10 days, plenty of locals report it feels hard to justify compared to leaving the car in town or not having a car at all during a Florence stay.
What regulars do: thread after thread on the Rick Steves Italy forum points back to the same move for early flights out of FLR T1. They sleep in the city, have the hotel book a taxi for around 15–20 minutes before the airline’s check-in opens, and avoid committing the car to the airport’s Long-term Parking entirely.
Watch out for the soft signals in reviews: chronic mentions of operational issues at FLR and almost zero concrete detail about Long-term Parking itself. That silence usually means seasoned flyers don’t see enough value in leaving a car there for more than a short drop. If you already plan to be car-free in Florence, lock in a taxi time with your hotel and skip Long-term Parking altogether.