Quick answer: Both cities limit what an owner may do with a property, and they hide the limit in different places. Florence publishes its restriction as a municipal rule. Rome writes its into conventions attached to particular buildings, discoverable only by reading the title history.
A buyer comparing these two capitals of the Italian imagination will read about yields, tourism and prestige. What they should compare is how each city constrains ownership, because both do, and only one of them does it where a purchaser can see it.
Where the restriction lives
Prefer the city whose restrictions you can check from a desk, unless you have a lawyer reading titles properly. Florence’s constraint is published, prospective and address-based. Rome’s, on the affected stock, is contractual, historic and title-based.
The condition that reverses it: competent local counsel. A buyer with a Roman lawyer instructed to read the chain of title and the conventions has neutralised the Roman risk entirely, and is then choosing between two cities on their merits. A buyer without one is choosing between a restriction they will find and a restriction they will not.
What Rome’s conventions do
A large part of the housing built in Rome’s zoned development plans was produced under conventions between the municipality and the developer. In exchange for land or reduced costs, the resulting dwellings carried constraints: a maximum price on sale and on letting, and conditions on the eligible occupier.
Those constraints attach to the property, not to the person who first bought it. They survive resales. A purchaser who buys a conventioned flat at an open-market price, from a seller who never mentioned the convention, has bought a property sold above the permitted price, with the consequences that follow.
| Element | Position |
|---|---|
| Origin | Convention between the comune and the developer |
| Constraints | Maximum sale and letting price; eligible occupier conditions |
| Attaches to | The property, transferring on resale |
| Release by time | A municipal resolution of 2022 provides for the price constraint to end 20 years after the convention |
| Release by payment | Redemption under art. 31 of law 448/1998, amended by legislation in 2021 and 2022 |
| Effect of release | The price constraint and the occupier constraint both fall away, and claims for the price difference are extinguished |
The Constitutional Court addressed the framework in judgment 210 of 23 September 2021, confirming that the redemption term is consistent with the principle that these constraints are not perpetual. That is the reassuring half of the picture: the constraints end, by time or by payment.
The unreassuring half is that until they end they are real, they are invisible from the street, and a buyer who does not look for them will not find them.
How to find out
Everything needed is inside the documents a proper Italian purchase already produces, which is why a missed convention is a diligence failure rather than a legal trap.
- Obtain the complete chain of title, not merely the seller’s own deed
- Read the original acquisition and identify whether the land came from a zoned development plan
- Obtain the convention itself, and read what it constrains and for how long
- Establish the date the convention was established, since the twenty-year release runs from it
- Establish whether redemption has already been carried out, and obtain the evidence
The due diligence guide sets out the general file. This is a specific addition for Rome and it is not exotic work: a Roman lawyer does it routinely when asked, and the reason it goes wrong is that foreign buyers frequently do not instruct one to look.
What Florence does instead
Publishes a rule. Tourist letting inside the historic core is limited to the units already regularly used for it during 2024; no further authorisations are granted within the UNESCO area; key boxes on facades are prohibited and a minimum size applies to let apartments, and the limit has since reached beyond the original boundary. The Florence page sets the position out in full.
The character of that restriction is entirely different from Rome’s.
- It is public, and a buyer can establish the position for an address before travelling
- It is prospective, restricting what can be started rather than unwinding what exists
- It is municipal, so it changes by council decision rather than by contract
- It applies by geography, not by the history of a particular building
- It restricts a use, not a price
That last point is worth dwelling on. Florence tells you what the property can be used for. Rome, on conventioned stock, sets the price at which it can be sold. Those are different kinds of interference with ownership and they matter to different buyers.
Which buyer should worry about which
A buyer intending to let to visitors should worry about Florence, where the door is closed in the core, and less about Rome, where the tourist letting market remains open subject to national and municipal licensing.
A buyer intending to hold and resell should worry about Rome, where a price constraint caps the exit on affected stock, and less about Florence, where the restriction affects use rather than value on resale.
A buyer intending to live in the property is barely touched by either, which is worth saying because the anxiety these rules generate is disproportionate for that buyer.
A buyer intending to renovate should read the Milan and Rome comparison, because in Rome the more common obstacle is an unresolved building amnesty rather than a convention, and it is the one that stops a project rather than capping a price.
The rest of the comparison
Both cities are expensive, both have deep international demand, and both have historic centres with the diligence burden that implies. The Florence guide and the Rome guide cover their markets, and Rome’s centro storico treats the core.
Two structural differences are worth carrying into a decision.
Rome is much larger and its districts behave as separate markets, so a city-wide statistic tells a buyer very little. Florence is small enough that the centre dominates and the whole market moves more or less together.
Rome’s economy is administrative and touristic with a large public sector. Florence’s is touristic, academic and artisanal, with a smaller professional base. That makes Rome’s residential demand steadier and Florence’s more exposed to the visitor economy the city is now restricting.
For the Tuscan alternative to Florence at a fraction of the price, the Florence and Siena comparison sets out what a buyer gains and loses by moving 70 km south, and the selling guide covers what either city requires of a vendor when the time comes.
Why buyers miss the Roman version
Three reasons, and all of them are structural rather than a matter of carelessness.
The property looks ordinary. A conventioned flat in a Roman development is physically indistinguishable from an unconstrained one next door, and nothing in a viewing or a listing reveals the difference.
The seller has no incentive to raise it. Where a constraint caps the price, disclosing it reduces what the seller receives, and a seller who has never been told the constraint applies will not disclose what they do not know.
The buyer’s advisers may not be instructed to look. A foreign purchaser frequently instructs a lawyer to handle the transaction rather than to investigate the title history, and the two are different pieces of work with different fees.
The remedy is to ask for the second explicitly. A Roman lawyer asked to report on the chain of title and on any convention affecting the property will do so as routine work, and the cost is trivial relative to the exposure.
What each city rewards
Florence rewards a buyer who reads municipal decisions. The restrictions are public, they change by council vote, and someone tracking them knows more than someone reading property commentary written a year ago.
Rome rewards a buyer who reads documents. Its restrictions are contractual and historic, they sit in files rather than in announcements, and they are found by instructing someone to look rather than by following the news.
Those are different skills and a buyer usually has one or the other. Choosing the city that matches what you are equipped to check is a more reliable strategy than choosing the city with the better photographs.
The size difference nobody accounts for
Rome is several times the size of Florence and its districts function as separate markets, which changes how a buyer should read anything written about the city.
A statistic about Roman prices, yields or demand is an average across markets that have very little to do with each other: the historic centre, the nineteenth-century districts, the post-war expansion, the outer developments and the coast. A buyer applying a citywide figure to a specific address is applying a number that describes somewhere else.
Florence is small enough that the centre dominates and the market moves more or less together, which makes citywide figures more meaningful and a buyer’s research faster.
The practical instruction is to research Rome at district level and Florence at city level, and to distrust any Roman comparison that does not name the district it refers to.
What each city does to a renovation
Both are heavily supervised and the constraints bite differently.
In Florence, heritage supervision is the binding constraint on almost anything visible, and the historic centre’s status means specifications and materials are prescribed rather than chosen.
In Rome, the binding constraint is more often the starting point: establishing that what exists is lawful, which for a substantial part of the stock means resolving an open amnesty file before any project can be designed.
A buyer planning works should therefore expect the Florence obstacle to be about how, and the Roman obstacle to be about whether, and should budget professional time accordingly.
A checklist for either city
- Establish the specific restriction that applies to the address, municipal in Florence and contractual in Rome
- Obtain the document that proves it, a register position or a convention, before the deposit is committed
- Instruct locally: a lawyer for the Roman title, a surveyor and the comune for the Florentine position
- Price the residential outcome rather than the tourist one, in both cities
- Assume the direction of regulation is tighter rather than looser over the holding period
None of that is exotic and all of it is skipped regularly, which is why the same two mistakes recur in these two cities year after year.
Frequently Asked Questions
Both restrict what an owner can do, and the difference is where the restriction lives. Florence's is a public municipal rule you can read before viewing. Rome's, on a large body of stock, sits in a convention attached to the land and discoverable only by reading the deed chain. Prefer the city whose restrictions you can check from a desk unless you have a lawyer reading titles.
Housing built on land made available by the municipality under a convention, in exchange for constraints on the price at which the property can be sold or let and on who is eligible to occupy it. It is a large share of the stock built in Rome's zoned development plans, and the constraints attach to the property rather than to the original buyer.
Rome addressed that directly. A municipal resolution of 2022 provided for the maximum price constraint to fall away twenty years after the convention was established, after which the property is freely transferable. Before that point the constraint stands unless it is removed through the statutory redemption route.
The statutory procedure for removing the constraints on payment of a sum, provided by article 31 of law 448 of 1998 and amended by later legislation in 2021 and 2022. Removing the price constraint also removes the accompanying constraint on who may buy, and it extinguishes claims for the difference between a constrained price and a price actually paid.
Because a property sold above its constrained price is exposed to a claim, and a buyer who did not know the constraint existed inherits the problem. The seller's agent will not raise it. The information is in the title history and in the convention, which is why the deed chain has to be read rather than skimmed.
It is public, municipal and prospective. Tourist letting inside the historic core is limited to units already operating during 2024, and no further authorisations are granted within the UNESCO area. A buyer can establish the position for an address before viewing, without reading a single deed.
Florence's is more restrictive and easier to discover; Rome's is narrower in application and far easier to miss. For a well-advised buyer Rome's is manageable, since it can be found and priced. For an unadvised one it is the more dangerous of the two, precisely because nothing on the surface suggests it is there.
Both do, in quantity. Most Roman property carries no convention and most Florentine property outside the core is unaffected by the short-let cap. The point is not that the cities are closed but that in each of them a specific and checkable restriction sits on part of the stock, and the checks are different.
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