Search for a flight to Florence and the results will show two different airports, sometimes on the same page, sometimes with the word "Florence" attached to both. One of them is actually in Florence. The other is in Pisa, about 50 miles away. This mix-up catches out more travelers than almost anything else in the planning stage, and it's worth sorting out before you book anything, because the wrong guess can mean an extra hour or two tacked onto the start or end of your trip.
The airport that is actually in Florence
Florence's own airport is called Amerigo Vespucci, named for the Florentine navigator whose first name gave America its name. Locals call it Peretola, after the neighborhood where it sits, just northwest of the city center. It's small — one terminal, short walk from plane to arrivals — and it's the airport you want if your flight options allow a choice, because it sits close enough to the historic center that getting in is almost an afterthought.
The catch is capacity. The runway and terminal are limited in size, so Vespucci handles a narrower range of airlines and routes than a reader coming from, say, North America or a non-European long-haul route might expect. Many travelers connect through a larger European hub and fly the last leg into Vespucci; others find no direct option here at all and end up at the second airport almost by default.
⭐ If your itinerary gives you a choice between "Florence Airport" and anything else, and the fare difference is small, Vespucci is almost always the better pick purely on the basis of how little travel time it adds to your trip.
The airport that calls itself Florence but isn't
The second airport is Pisa's Galileo Galilei, and this is where the naming confusion really lives. Many budget carriers — Ryanair among them — market routes to Pisa under labels like "Florence (Pisa)" or similar, because Pisa is the nearest airport with the runway length and gate capacity to handle their traffic, and because enough travelers are heading to Florence that it makes commercial sense to say so. Technically accurate, practically misleading: Pisa airport is in Pisa, a separate city, and getting from there to Florence is a real journey, not a short hop.
⚠️ Read the fine print on any booking before you commit. If the airport code is PSA, you are flying into Pisa, not Florence, regardless of what the route is called in the search results. The two airports are IATA-coded FLR (Vespucci) and PSA (Galileo Galilei), and that three-letter code is the only detail that never lies.
None of this makes Pisa a bad choice — it's simply a different choice, one that works well if the fare is significantly better or if it's the only option for your route. It just needs to be a choice you make knowingly, with the connecting journey built into your plans, rather than a surprise you discover at the arrivals hall.
Getting from Vespucci into the city
From Florence's own airport, the tram is the mechanism most people end up using. The T2 line runs from the airport terminal directly into the center, terminating near Santa Maria Novella, Florence's main train station and a natural orientation point for onward travel by foot, taxi, or bus to wherever you're actually staying. The ride is short, the trams are modern and easy to find once you're through arrivals, and tickets are sold from machines at the stop — buy one before boarding, since there's no conductor selling them on the tram itself.
Taxis also queue outside the terminal and are a reasonable option if you have luggage, a late arrival, or a destination that isn't an easy walk from the Santa Maria Novella end of the tram line. Ask the driver to confirm it's a metered fare before you get in; Florence taxis are regulated and the meter is the honest way to pay, but confirming up front avoids any ambiguity.
⭐ If your hotel sits anywhere near /santa-maria-novella/ or within the old walls generally, the tram-plus-walk combination is usually faster door to door than it looks on paper, because traffic in the center can slow a taxi down more than you'd expect.
Getting from Pisa into the city
From Pisa's airport, the most direct mechanism into Florence is the train. A regional or direct rail connection runs between Pisa and Florence's Santa Maria Novella station, and getting to the train from the airport itself is straightforward — Pisa Airport has its own station link, so you're not managing a separate bus transfer just to reach the tracks. Check the current schedule and any need to change trains in Pisa Centrale before you fly, since connection patterns shift and this isn't something worth guessing at on arrival.
There are also coach and shuttle bus services that run between the airport and Florence directly, which can be useful if your arrival time doesn't line up well with trains, or if you'd rather not manage luggage through a station transfer. These are run by private operators rather than the rail authority, so compare current options rather than assuming one particular company still runs the route you remember from a previous trip.
⚠️ Whichever way you go, build in a real buffer. The Pisa-to-Florence leg is not a quick shuttle hop — it's closer to the length of a short regional journey — and travelers who schedule a tight afternoon arrival followed immediately by, say, a timed entry slot at the Uffizi or Accademia are the ones who end up calling the ticket office from a train platform.
Booking with this in mind
None of this should scare you off either airport. Plenty of trips run smoothly through Pisa, and plenty of travelers never even realize there was a second option because their route only ever offered Vespucci. The point is just to know which one you're booking before the ticket is nonrefundable, and to build your first and last day's plans around the airport you'll actually be using.
If you're stitching together a longer trip that includes a side excursion, it's also worth knowing that Pisa itself is a reasonable stop in its own right — something to keep in mind if you're planning any of the day trips out of Florence, since a Pisa-bound arrival can sometimes double as the start of one rather than pure overhead. For everything else — what to see once you're actually in the city, and how to sequence it — the itineraries and booking and tickets guides are the next logical stop once your flight itself is sorted.
In pictures
