Freya's Florence Tours - Freya Middleton

26/07/2025

Car hire scams you should try to avoid in Italy...
Renting a car in Italy gives you the freedom to experience La Dolce Vita on your own terms - but some agencies' dirty tactics can leave you with a bitter aftertaste. Here are some of the most common car hire scams, and how to avoid them.
Hiring a car in Italy is essential if you're a visitor who wants to explore some of the country's less-connected rural and coastal areas - and most of the time, you can do so with no trouble beyond the mild hassle of waiting in line to pick up and drop off your vehicle.
But in some cases, a few bad providers take advantage of loopholes and misplaced customer trust to boost their profits with bogus fines and fees, giving the rest a bad name.
Some of these scams are common throughout Europe and beyond, some are more rare, but you'll want to be aware of all of them to stand the best chance of completing your trip with your bank account unscathed.
Here are some of the key tricks to know about - and what you should do to avoiding falling victim to them.
The bogus damages
Let's start with the most widespread scam, one favoured by dodgy rental agencies the world over: billing hundreds of euros for minor cosmetic damage, sometimes days or even weeks after the customer has left the country.
This is something a number of The Local's readers have reported experiencing when hiring a car in Italy.
In many of these cases, the mark was there before the car even left the garage, but wasn't included in the list of existing damages shared with the customer (the representative might even have offered reassurance that the scratch was so trivial it wasn't worth making a note of).
"We had a flight to catch so signed for insurance claim. It was so obvious it was a scam and if I had more time I would have dug my heels in," one disgruntled holidaymaker who was stung with a steep charge for 'damages' told The Local.
To avoid falling victim to this scam, experienced travellers recommend taking timestamped photos and videos of every single scratch and dent before getting behind the wheel, so you can dispute any surprise charges that may arise later.
The 'missing' items
Meticulously documenting the state of your vehicle before hitting the road may not be enough, some users warn; you also want to check that the car is equipped with everything the agency claims it is.
In some cases, customers of Italian rental companies have reported being charged for items that the company said were 'missing' on the vehicle's return - even though they swear those items weren't in the car in the first place.
One user of an agency in Sicily told the financial news site This is Money they were fined as much as €128 for a tube of glue allegedly missing from a tyre inflation kit, while a customer of a Rome-based firm was stung with a €300 fee for an absent air compressor.
The broken lock
So you've cased your vehicle inside and out for damages and checked to see all the items listed are in place: but before driving off, make sure to carry out one last check - this time on the manual locks.
Some holidaymakers in Sicily told This is Money they exclusively used their rental car's remote locking system throughout their trip, only for an agent to test a key in one of the manual locks on its return and inform them it's not working and they'll be charged for its repair.
The missed booking
If an out-of-town agency offers you free transport to its base, exercise caution: one car rental user wrote on Tripadvisor that they had booked a car with an agency that was two hours late in sending a shuttle bus to pick customers up from Rome's Ciampino airport and take them to its offsite location down the road.
By the time their party arrived, they were told their booking slot had expired, and they would have to pay at least €140 to secure a new vehicle with a higher insurance excess.
If you think you're in danger of missing your slot, it's advisable to make your own travel arrangements to make sure you arrive on time, as the cost of re-booking is likely to be significantly higher than a taxi fare.
The 'late' return
If some car hire firms will try to stop you from getting to your booking on time, other unscrupulous entities will play the same game at the other end, charging you a late return fee even when you've met the deadline.
One customer commented in a recent discussion on Youtube that their rental company in Germany tried to charge them for a full extra day after an agent checked them in an hour later than their actual return time. While this kind of behaviour hasn't yet been reported in Italy, it's worth keeping an eye out for.
Luckily, the driver in question had taken a timestamped photograph of the car's mileage and fuel gauge, proving that it was back in the agency's car park well within the agreed-upon timeframe.
The insurance upsell
This doesn't exactly fall under the scam category, but it's common for car rental agencies in Italy to aggressively upsell you on their insurance, even if you're already covered by your credit card provider - as this Youtuber attests.
As well as costing you hundreds of euros on top of the car rental fee itself, buying additional insurance from the agency will invalidate the free insurance provided by your credit card company.
If you do have access to a credit card with insurance coverage, make sure the person whose card you're paying with is the same person you've named on your paperwork as your main driver - otherwise you'll be forced to purchase separate insurance from the agency.
The confidence trick
This last scam isn't perpetuated by car hire companies, but by thieves looking to target vulnerable tourists.
The ruse works like this, according to one visiter who took to Tripadvisor to warn others: a person on a motorbike comes up from behind and slashes the car's back tyre, then indicates to the driver that they need to pull over. When the driver realises they have a flat tyre, the thief - often accompanied by an accomplice - offers to direct them to a nearby garage.
Once they've gained access to the car, the thieves take their victims to a remote location and steal valuables from inside the car, knowing that tourists often have large amounts of cash to hand.
While anyone could be the victim of such a scam, drivers of rental cars can sometimes be easily identified by the vehicle's red licence plate (on French rental cars, driven over the border into Italy), or occasionally by a yellow sticker on the petrol cap that tells the driver what type of fuel to use.
While a few tourists have reported being targeted by this kind of scam over the past few years, it's fairly rare, and not a reason to avoid renting a car in Italy.
Of course, you can't stop someone from slashing your tyre - but you can turn down offers from strangers to take you somewhere unknown, and keep your valuables out of sight and easy reach.
https://www.thelocal.it/.../seven-car-hire-scams-to.../...

26/07/2025

The Giglio of Florence turned 96 yesterday!
This beautiful symbol of Florence was derived from the flower that traditionally grows in the area around the city: Iris Fiorentina.
The Giglio of Florence (Florentine lily) is not a lily, but a stylized iris.
This beautiful white flower was first applied to the city’s coat of arms in the 11th century; it was white on a red background. After the bloody battle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, which ended in 1250 with a victory for the Guelphs, they switched the colours as a sign of their power, thus creating the famous symbol of the red giglio on a white background.
In the Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri describes the eve of this event as follows: ‘The lily of the flagpole was not yet reversed and not coloured red by division…’
The new symbol was so important to Florence that in 1252 it graced the first Florin that was ever created.
In 1811, Napoleon tried to banish the giglio from Florence, but this led to such violent protests that he soon decided to give the Florentines their beloved symbol back.
Il Giglio Fiorentino can be found on countless places in the city. On old coats of arms on historic buildings, but also on the numerous (company) logos like that of the municipality of Florence, the Fiorentina football club....
Florence and her giglio have been inseparable for 10 centuries, so why is the Giglio only 95 years old?
On 25th July 1929, the government officially recognised the coat of arms of the municipality of Florence as we know it today: a shield of silver, with the red lily.
So... Happy Birthday Giglio of Florence!
Note: The original Design approved by the government is kept in the Oblate library

26/07/2025

TODAY, 26th July, is the day dedicated to Sant'Anna, model of virtue and mother of Mary, and co-patroness of the city of Florence for which she is also a symbol of freedom and independence of the city.

Florence remembers this day because, on July 26, 1343, the city freed itself from the tyranny of the French Gualtieri di Brienne, known as the Duke of Athens, driving him out of Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the city government.

In memory of this event and the importance that Sant'Anna had for the city of Florence since then, every year the city honours her figure with a solemn ceremony. The traditional celebration culminates with the homage to the Saint inside the church of Orsanmichele, temple of the ancient Florentine Arts, in front of the sixteenth-century sculptural group by Francesco da Sangallo. The sculpture dominates the altar of the left aisle and represents Sant'Anna protecting Mary and the little Jesus in the foreground.

Today, the facade of the Church will be decorated with the flags of the Arts and there will be a historical Parade through the streets of Florence.

The Orsanmichele Church features one of the most ancient images of Saint Anne that you will ever find in the city, a fresco of the Saint painted in 1398 by Mariotto Di Nardo portraying the Saint with a miniature model of the city in her hands. The fresco is located over the votive altar of St. Anne, built in 1379, with a marble group of St. Anne, the Virgin and Child by Francesco da Sangallo (c. 1526).

26/07/2025

Great news!
A normally inaccessible section of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio is once again accessible and part of the museum itinerary. Starting today, July 26, on the occasion of the traditional annual celebration of Saint Anne, patron saint of Florence, the room of the Palazzo Vecchio Museum will reopen to the public.

It houses, along with other works, a rare iconographic testimony to the historical event that inspired the special homage Florentines pay to this saint: an extraordinarily important detached fresco, attributed to Orcagna, dating between 1343 and 1349 and originally from the ancient Stinche prison, which allegorically depicts the tyrannical Angevin lord Walter of Brienne, Duke of Athens, forced to flee the city by a revolt that began on the very day of the liturgical calendar dedicated to the Mother of the Virgin.

The celebration of Saint Anne has ancient origins dating back to 14th-century Florence, during the expulsion of the Duke of Athens, Walter of Brienne, a foreign tyrant of a city that had always resented its masters. The popular uprising (1343), which forced the duke to flee through a half-hidden door in the Palazzo Vecchio, occurred on the very day dedicated to Saint Anne and, according to what was believed at the time, through her direct intercession.

This episode invested the figure of the saint with not only religious importance but also with high civic value, establishing her as the protector of the city. In times past, on the feast day of Saint Anne, the people offered candles and money before her image in Orsanmichele, which was decorated with the flags of the Guilds. Today, the celebration has been revived and will be celebrated with the special opening of the room containing the fresco and a historical procession that stops in Piazza Signoria and the Duomo square before reaching Orsanmichele, where it concludes with the ceremony of the delivery of the candle to the altar of Saint Anne.

To mark this important day for Florence and the reopening of the Mezzanine to the public, special guided tours are scheduled at 10:30 am, 12:00 pm, 3:00 pm, and 4:30 pm, led by MUS.E (duration 1 hour and 15 minutes, reservations required: 055-0541450 [email protected]).

26/07/2025

You are in for a treat this evening!
Remembering St Anna also means remembering the expulsion of the Duke of Athens, with a popular uprising, on St Anna's feast day on 26th July 1343. Thus Sant'Anna came to assume a civic value as well as religious and, indeed, she became the patron saint of the city.
This evening, in the historical procession that will cross the city, the seven Major Arts and 14 Minor Arts will be represented in heraldry by the procession of Calcio Storico Fiorentino. The Liberation of Florence was thanks to these guilds that also financed the construction of palaces, churches and monuments.
Orsanmichele will be decorated with the flags of the arts today.
The historical parade begins at the Palagio di Parte Guelfa, proceeding to to Piazza Della Signoria along via Porta Rossa and via Vacchereccia. At 8.45pm the procession leaves Palazzo Vecchio for the duomo; at 9.30pm in front of Santa Maria Del Fiore, religious authorities will join the procession which will then proceed to the church of Orsanmichele; at 10pm In the church of Orsanmichele there will be a blessing and delivery of the candle.

This year, the traditional celebrations in honour of the Saint will be joined by the reopening of a room in Palazzo Vecchio. This room features a detached fresco, an important pictorial work attributed to Orcagna, originally from the ancient Stinche prison and dated between 1343 and 1349. The fresco depicts the escape of the Duke of Athens on the day dedicated to Saint Anne, whose imposing figure dominates the entire work.

26/07/2025

WARNING:
Air travellers in Italy face disruption to flights on Saturday 26 July due to strike action by airport ground staff including baggage handlers and security workers.
The four-hour strike, scheduled from 13.00 to 17.00, is expected to result in flight delays and cancellations.
The industrial action has been called by several trade unions for various reasons relating to employment contracts and working conditions.
Seperately, pilots and cabin crews from Spanish budget airline Volotea are also set to strike at the same time on Saturday, from 13.00 to 17.00.

26/07/2025

The latest new train to be introduced to Tuscany’s rail network was presented to the press this morning.

26/07/2025

25/07/2025

Surely this couldn't happen???
With the 61st Venice Biennale set to open in under ten months, in May 2026, many participating countries have already announced which artist they plan to put on the art world’s premier international stage. The status of the U.S. pavilion, however, remains undecided. As hopefuls compete for the chance to represent their country, the provocateur Andres Serrano has gone public with a flagrantly Trump-centric proposal. Can he win this administration’s approval?

Serrano is proposing to stage an installation that would expand on his ongoing project The Game: All Things Trump, a collection of Trump-themed memorabilia largely acquired from eBay for at least $200,000. Some of these items, including the short-lived Trump Steaks, tabloid clippings, MAGA hats, and a piece of the President’s wedding cake, were debuted in a pop-up exhibition in New York in 2019, during Trump’s first term.

“If we were accepted we could ask the President if there was something he would like to contribute,” Serrano said of his pavilion proposal. “We are talking not about merchandise or even art, but about representation. Who better to represent America than the President himself?”

The New York-born artist, 74, is famed for his provocative artworks, including the “blasphemous” P**s Christ (1987) photo that depicts a crucifix in the artist’s urine. The Game isn’t Serrano’s only work related to the president that eschews a clear partisan stance, which has ruffled some feathers. In 2022, a theater in London canceled a screening of his film Insurrection, about the January 6 riots, because they deemed it to be too “pro-Trump.”

Artist provocateur Andres Serrano is proposing to install a Trump-themed exhibition in the U.S. Pavilion for the 2026 Venice Biennale.

25/07/2025

Have you visited the museum in the oldest hospital in the world?
On June 23, 1288 Folco Portinari, the father of Beatrice, the woman who inspired the poetry of Dante, donated the land in Florence upon which the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital was to be built. It is an example of the highest excellence in the Italian artistic, cultural and healthcare heritage. In fact, it is the oldest hospital in the world that is still in operation.
Santa Maria Nuova holds over 700 works of art, including important paintings, frescoes, sculptures and furnishings, and some of the greatest artists of all time have passed through its doors. One of them was Leonardo da Vinci and it is supposed that Leonardo Da Vinci dissected corpses here to study their anatomy.
Today Santa Maria Nuova makes for a fascinating walk among cloisters, the church of Sant’Egidio, and semi-hidden halls and rooms where you can discover artistic masterpieces by the likes of Alessandro Allori, Piero della Francesca, Buontalenti, Bicci di Lorenzo and Lorenzo Ghiberti.
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday: 10am to 5pm;
Sunday: 1 to 5 pm.
Reservation is required to visit the museum (groups of max 20 people led by a professional guide). The tour lasts 40/50 minutes.
Reservations: 055 2001586 - [email protected]
Cost: € 15 per person, by way of a donation.
Piazza Santa Maria Nuova, 1.
theflorentine.net

25/07/2025

It's well worth a visit to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (Via degli Alfani, 78), literally meaning Workshop of semi-precious stones.
It's an extraordinary museum dedicated to semi-precious stone inlays, where artistic talent competes only with the splendour of the materials employed.
It was the passion of the Medici for this precious form of art that led Grand Duke Ferdinando I de'Medici to establish in 1588 a court laboratory specialised in semi-precious mosaics and inlays. This grand ducal institution, which remained active for three centuries, was the core of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, established at the end of the 19th century, which still has its seat in the original location chosen in 1798 for the laboratories formerly housed in the Uffizi.
One of the masterpieces of the crafts is the overall decoration of the Ca****la dei Principi (Chapel of Princes) in the Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze. The technique, which originated from Byzantine inlay work, was perfected by the Opificio masters and the artworks they produced became known as "opera di commessi medicei" (commesso is the old name of the technique, similar to ancient mosaics) and later as "commesso in pietre dure" (semi-precious stones mosaic).
The artisans performed the exceptionally skilled and delicate task of inlaying thin veneers of semi-precious stones especially selected for their colour, opacity, brilliance and grain to create elaborate decorative and pictorial effects. Items of extraordinary refinement were created in this way, from furnishings to all manner of artworks. Today, artisans trained at the Opificio assist many of the world's museums in their restoration programmes.

25/07/2025

I can't believe it was 14 years ago that I had a conversation with Matteo Renzi, then mayor of Florence, about measures to help create a pollution free Florence.

The then recently established pedestrian-only zones were just one of several steps toward a cleaner, pollution-free city, Florence mayor Matteo Renzi told the press, as Florence reached for a greener goal: 20 percent less airborne pollution by 2020.
The city hoped to meet this target by adopting the Action Plan for Sustainable Energy, which some 2,700 Italian mayors had already done and which was in line with the European Union plan, launched in 2007, to reduce pollution levels by 20 percent by 2020 in all member states.

Florence needed to decrease its CO2 level by 2 million tonnes a year to meet this target.

Other strategies included increasing Florence's network of bicycle lanes, introducing incentives for electric cars, and promoting car-sharing and shared parking.
Even the city's eight purified water fountains do their share to reduce pollution: they are estimated to save 450,000 kilos of C02 produced during transportation of bottled water and 113 kilos of plastic.

Certainly the number of bike lanes throughout the city have encouraged many more people to ride rather than drive. Free stainless steel water bottles for Florence's school children hopefully weaned them off plastic bottles. The newish electric trams and buses have made a significant difference to CO2 emissions and the historic centre being closed to traffic except for residents, taxis and buses has significantly reduced traffic pollution.

This year Florence officially launched its Scudo Verde (Green Shield), a large environmental restricted traffic zone designed to monitor and limit the circulation of the most polluting vehicles. Unlike the current historic center ZTL, which remains active and continues to allow entry only to residents and authorized vehicles, the Green Shield covers a much larger area, extending beyond the city center and encompassing 66% of the urban area. Once fully operational, the Green Shield will ban the most polluting vehicles year-round, 24/7, without introducing new tolls or restrictions beyond those already in place.

Vehicles permanently banned from entering or circulating in the restricted zone include: two-stroke mopeds and motorcycles, diesel and petrol cars and heavy-duty diesel and petrol vehicles.

I'm sure the above helps, but every year summers in Florence are hotter and last longer and I have noticed little, if any, difference in air pollution 😢