Could US students help solve Florence’s tourist problem?

On the streets outside the American University of Florence, no one is speaking Italian. Everywhere, there are strong, clear American accents, debating the merits of Ibiza or the weight-loss benefits of the Mediterranean diet.

This year, though, students might detect an undercurrent of veiled resentment in the air. On signposts and scaffolding here around the university, you can still see the remains of bright yellow stickers that appeared last September, bearing a baleful message in blocky black font: “YANKEE GO HOME.”

The stickers are the remnants of a campaign to curb the growing American presence in the city of Michaelangelo.

Hordes of American visitors have been a feature of Florentine life for decades, and exchange students like those at the American University have studied here for half a century. But in recent years, the number of programs bringing American college kids to Florence has exploded – just when native inhabitants are facing an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis.

Now, it would seem that the residents of one of Europe’s most eager host cities are running out of graciousness. Protests against overtourism, short-term rentals, and foreign investment are on the rise.

“This is the mother of all problems,” says Francesco Torrigiani, an organizer for Salvi-Amo Firenze, a housing and livability advocacy group. “But it didn’t start yesterday.”

Foreign students a mixed blessing?

According to the Association of American College and University Programs in Italy, each year Florence attracts more than 18,000 American exchange students, who attend one of more than 45 study-abroad programs. They account for nearly half of all American exchange students in Italy.

These programs have only increased in importance as city leaders come under growing pressure to develop an alternative economic engine to mass tourism. Among some advocates here, longer-staying students are seen as a preferred alternative to tourists, nearly 15 million of whom visited the city in 2024 alone.

All these visitors need somewhere to stay, and, increasingly, they have chosen Airbnbs and other short-term rentals that have colonized the city center and robbed it of its precious housing supply. About 30,000 apartments come on the market in Florence each year, Mr. Torrigiani explains, and at least 17,000 of them are short-term rentals. Long-term residents find it ever harder to house themselves.

The result has been massive rent increases. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, rents have gone up by 50% in Florence, according to data from Italian real estate site Idealista. “The rental market is in crisis,” said Vicenzo De Tommaso, head of Idealista’s research department, in a release on the company’s website. Finding affordable housing, he says, “has become almost impossible.”

It’s less impossible, though, for foreign students, who can generally pay far more than the average Italian can afford. One controversial development, a hotel, coworking space, and student residence called The Social Hub, has drawn protests for pricing single rooms at €1,300 ($1,470) a month – 75% of the average Italian’s monthly wage.

U.S. universities look after their own

To make sure that their students find housing, American universities are going into the lodging business – and charging a princely sum. New York University, Florida University, and Kent State University have all recently purchased grand palazzi to convert into residences, social premises, or teaching facilities. NYU’s off-campus residences in Florence can cost more than $10,000 per semester – more than double the average cost for a similar apartment in the city.

Still, the authorities maintain that exchange students are better for the city than tourists. Tourists “take, and they don’t give back that much,” says Carlotta Ferrari, general manager of Fondiazone Destination Florence, the city’s tourism marketing board. “With students ... it’s totally different: They’re looking for university, but they are also looking for our way of living. They love to be Italian for a while.”

“The American community that lives in Florence is totally integrated,” insists Sara Funaro, the city’s mayor since June 2024. “This applies both to those who live and work in the city and ... to the students who arrive here.”

Critics, though, say that the exchange programs, some of which last just a few weeks, offer little opportunity for Americans to integrate with the city and its residents, making their participants largely indistinguishable from tourists.

“The American students come here to have a Disneyland experience,” says Marella Amorini, a native of the city and vice president of an international students’ group. “And they are having it.”

Trouble abroad

Certainly the American presence is having a visible impact on the cityscape: more English on signage, more coffee shops serving “American-style” lattes and breakfasts, more restaurants and bars geared to American students’ discount appetites.

Over the years, the growing American community has developed a reputation for public rowdiness, which grates in the context of Italy’s reserved drinking culture. Local resentments have spilled out in unexpected ways.

In 2017, after two American students said they were raped by police officers on their way home from a Florence nightclub, then-Mayor Dario Nardella chose to respond by chastising the student population. “Florence is not the city of sballo,” or intoxication, he said. “From the point of view of rules and good behavior, it is no different from many American cities.”

Ms. Funaro, Mr. Nardella’s successor, takes a decidedly different tack. “I think that we are the ones who have to build a relationship in order to explain what the rules are,” she says.

Ms. Funaro has also made reducing short-term rentals a priority of her administration. In November, her government outlawed lockboxes and megaphones in the city center. An attempted ban on short-term rentals was overturned by a Florentine court; further restrictions would require buy-in from Italy’s far-right national government, an opponent of Ms. Funaro’s progressive party.

But it might all be too little, too late. Consultants are now reportedly advising universities that the city has become too crowded, too expensive, and too Americanized. They say new programs should find new Italian cities to occupy, where their students might enjoy a more “authentic” experience.

“It’s too late; a lot of Florence has already been sold,” says Mr. Torrigiani, the advocacy group organizer. “As we say in Italy, the cattle have already escaped from the barn.”