Europcar parking facility at SMN garage

[wco81]

Hello,

I will be visiting Florence for the first time in years. Then I will rent a car for a few days to head south and then return to take a train up to Verona.

I've rented from Europcar at Borgo Ognissanti before but it appears now, they just have an office there and you pick up and return cars at the parking garage underneath SMN stazione.

I looked at the article on Visit Florence and it references a map with a path to the SMN garage to avoid the ZTL arriving and departing but I don't see a map there.

Where to Park in Florence, Italy? Map & List of Parking in Florence, Free and Paid Parking Lots

Looking for a parking lot in Florence? Here is a map that shows where the main parking lots are in Florence, both paid and free areas, with details on cost, location and hours.

www.visitflorence.com

I'm sure Europcar will give me a map but I'd like to plan for it -- my trip will be in early to mid July.

I will be driving up from San Gimignano and then plan to board a Frecciarossa so I wanted to compare the route to the garage against Google Maps routing.

 

[Lourdes]

Ciao WCO81,

You're right, that article doesn't have maps, because the entire area around the station went through lots of changes since the tramway system was set up and I don't ever drive to it, so I need to go check again and see who else has rental cars inside that parking lot. Seems Sixt is also there now.

OK so you basically need both a map with the way to get out from the train station and out of the historical center without going into the ZTL: here's the route out of the underground parking lot. This takes you out to the Fortezza, just to show you you're out by then.


And the route to get back there is this one - from Via NAZIONALE:



MAKE SURE YOU TURN RIGHT ON VIA FIUME before you get to SMN --- if you were to continue straight, you end up inside the ZTL. This way you go around it, reach the station and the entrance to the parking lot.
Seems the Europcar has spaces on sublevel 4. Pull inside like if you're getting a temporary parking ticket, follow signs and park in the spots marked Europcar.

Hope these at least let you see the best routes -- Google Maps sends you into the ZTL all the time, so it also useful to check where the ZTL boundaries are and where the cameras are set up (all the T boxes in blue and red) - https://www.serviziallastrada.it/di...informazioni-turistiche/la-ztl-a-firenze.html

Let me know if this was useful or not, I'll try to link to direct maps instead if it isn't.

 

[wco81]

Thanks for those maps.

I heard that for returning, you can cross the Arno at Ponte all Vittoria, which is well west of the centro storico and then approach SMN along the west and actually there is a parking garage entrance right off Via Luigi Alamanni, which connects underground to the entrance you show on your maps, which south of the station?

This is the screenshot I took in Google Street View.

 

[Lourdes]

Yes, you heard right -- there is another entrance to the same parking lot on that side of the train station, and yes, you reach it by turning right on to via Alamanni. Towards the end of the street, the entrance ramp to the underground parking garage is on the right. I shared the map to the other entrance since I wanted to make it easy considering, for the return, you will already have used the other entrance/exit so it would have been the same one. But of course, coming from San Gimignano, you would get to Via Alamanni first. If somehow you were to miss that turn, then you would have to continue along and use the other route because of so many one-way streets it would be difficult to backtrack.