Two-dimensional hydraulic modeling is fundamental to simulate flood events in urban area. Key factors to reach optimal results are detailed information about domain geometry and utility of hydrodynamic models to integrate the full or simplified Saint Venant equations in complex geometry. However, in some cases, detailed topographic datasets that represent the domain geometry are not available, so approximations-such as diffusive wave equation-is introduced whilst representing urban area with an adjusted roughness coefficient. In the present paper, different methods to represent buildings and approximation of the Saint Venant equations are tested by performing experiments on a scale physical model of urban district in laboratory. Simplified methods are tested for simulation of a real flood event which occurred in 2013 in the city of Olbia, Italy. Results show that accuracy of simulating flow depth with a detailed geometry is comparable to the one achieved with an adjusted roughness coefficient.