We are planning a trip to Italy in July for 10 days, what is the best city to stay in?

Question

We want to see Rome, but we also want to travel in wine country. Would it be better to stay at 2 hotels, or is it easy and quick to travel between Florence (and surrounding towns) and Rome?

Answer 1

I was going to say Florence!

I stayed in Siena and it was very nice, but not nearly as exciting as Florence. There is wine country all around there, I sent to San Gimignano where they make some nice whites. That city has a very interesting history as well.

From Florence you can take buses to some of the surrounding cities very easily.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

On my first trip I was told to stay in Florence.  We ignored this and stayed on a working vineyard in a B & B called Sovigliano in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa.  We did a lot of research and bought a lot of tour books before settling on this place.  Tavarnelle Val di Pesa is halfway between Sienna and Florence.   It was amazing.  We drank the wine (not great - young) of the vineyard while looking out over the hills.  Wonderful.  It is a bit simple and people expecting luxury accomodations may be disappointed.  No tv, no phones, we shared a bath with another room, etc.  The hosts seemed slightly overwhelmed with the task of running the place (there are a lot of rooms) but we loved it anyway.

However, be forewarned that the parking in Florence is tough.  We misunderstood a sign and ended up at night with our car locked in a parking lot.  We had to take a very expensive cab back to our place and then a bus back into Florence in the morning.  The bus is slow.  If we had understood the Italian signs a little better we would have been fine.  We drove to all the hill towns and to Pisa from Tavarnelle Val di Pesa.  It is well located.

I came back to Italy a few years later for the Milan Furniture Fair.  We tacked on a visit to Florence because we were on a mission to see more of the museums there.  We lost part of a day in Florence with our car/taxi/bus fiasco so we only saw the Uffizi Gallery.  After all, many of the greatest works of the Renaissance make their home there.  We flew into Milan, drove to Camogli, stayed a night, hiked from Monterosso to Vernazza in the Cinque Terre.  All exhausted after our hike we drove into Florence without a hotel reservation.  We stayed in Florence this time.  Quite honestly, our hotel was picked by driving from place to place until we found one that had a cheap room within walking distance of all things we wanted to see.  We were motivated to find one fast since we both had to pee.  We ended up a Albergo La Gioconda.  Which, was really cheap, well located, fairly clean, but old, and constantly smelled of cigarette smoke because of the chain smoking maids.  The reviews on Tripadvisor aren't good but we felt it was a decent value for what we paid and how we found it.  I would hate to drive in and out of Florence every day.   It is a larger city and there is traffic.  They also have rush hours.  I enjoyed parking our car this time (in the hotel lot) and leaving it until it was time to go back to Milan for the furniture fair.

I hope our experience helps you make up your mind.  It really depends on the type of experience you wish to have.  Our two experiences were very different but both good.  Buona voyage!

Answer 3

Rome and Florence are about 3 hours apart. When we took a tour, we stayed in Rome, Florence and Venice. From Rome, we took a day trip down to the Amalfi coast to visit Capri and Pompeii (about a 3 hour trip). From Florence, we explored Tuscany and Siena. We just stayed in Venice when we were there. I would probably split the trip between Rome and Florence.