Florence: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Florence began its cathedral in 1296 and left a hole in the roof forty-two metres across, because no one alive knew how to cover a span that wide — and they built it anyway, trusting that somebody would work it out. For a hundred and twenty years it stood open to the rain. In 1418 a goldsmith with no architectural training won the competition by refusing to explain his method, and then built it without scaffolding, inventing the machines as he went. Two hours, and one serious climb.
A short history of Florence
In 59 BC Julius Caesar founded Florentia as a colony for veteran soldiers on the banks of the Arno. In the Middle Ages the city grew rich on wool and banking, and the Black Death of 1348 killed a large part of its population. In the 15th century, under the patronage of the Medici family, Florence became the home of the Renaissance: in 1436 Brunelleschi's cathedral dome was completed, and Botticelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo worked here. Between 1865 and 1871 it was the capital of Italy. On 4 November 1966 the Arno flooded the city and damaged thousands of works of art. In 1982 its centre was declared a World Heritage Site.
The ten best sights in Florence
1DuomoFree to enter the church. The dome is €30 and must be booked
2Brunelleschi’s dome463 steps, no lift, and built with no scaffolding at all
3Giotto’s campanile414 steps, and the only view with the dome in it
4BattisteroThe bronze doors took Ghiberti 27 years, and these are copies
5Uffizi€25, book or do not go, and the Botticelli room is upstairs
6Galleria dell’Accademia€16 for the David. Twenty minutes is enough
7Palazzo Vecchio€12.50, and the tower is a separate €12.50 and worth it
8Bargello€10, Donatello’s David, and it is never crowded
9Santa Croce€8, and Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli are all in it
10Cappelle Medicee€9, and Michelangelo carved the tombs himself
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Florence →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Florence:
Free walking tours in Florence
The dome nobody knew how to build
Florence began its cathedral in 1296 and left a hole in the roof forty-two metres across, because no one alive knew how to cover a span that wide — and they built it anyway, trusting that somebody would work it out. For a hundred and twenty years it stood open to the rain. In 1418 a goldsmith with no architectural training won the competition by refusing to explain his method, and then built it without scaffolding, inventing the machines as he went. Two hours, and one serious climb.
- Battistero · In 1401 the city held a competition for a set of bronze doors and Ghiberti beat Brunelleschi by one vote. Ghiberti then spent twenty-seven years on them, and another twenty-seven on a second set that Michelangelo called the Gates of Paradise. Brunelleschi left for Rome in disgust and came back an engineer.
- Duomo · The dome is four million bricks laid in a herringbone pattern that locks each course in place as it rises, so it supported itself at every stage and needed no centring. Brunelleschi designed the hoists, the cranes and an ox-powered reversible gear to lift the stone, and he kept the method secret to the end.
- Campanile di Giotto · Giotto was made city architect at sixty-seven and started this tower; he died three years later with one storey built. Four hundred and fourteen steps, and it is the better climb of the two because from it you can see the dome.
- Orsanmichele · A grain market that became a church when a painting of the Virgin on one of its pillars started working miracles. The city then ordered each guild to fill a niche on the outside with a statue of its patron saint, and the result is the best free sculpture in Florence at street level.
- Piazza della Signoria · A bronze disc in the pavement marks where Savonarola was burned in 1498, four years after he had persuaded the city to burn its own paintings, books and mirrors on the same spot. The city turned on him within a year of the Bonfire of the Vanities.
- Ponte Vecchio · Butchers worked on the bridge until 1593, when a Medici grand duke who had built a private corridor over the top of it decided he did not want to smell them and ordered goldsmiths in instead. The corridor is still there and so are the goldsmiths.
What the bank bought
The Medici were bankers, not nobles, and their money came from a single commercial advantage: a branch network and double-entry bookkeeping at a time when charging interest was a sin. They never held a formal title in Florence for the first three generations; they simply paid for things, and the city did what they wanted. Everything on this walk was bought with that money, including the idea that a ruler should be a patron. Two hours, and most of it is indoors.
- Uffizi · Built in 1560 as the offices of the Florentine magistrates — uffizi simply means offices — and the top floor was where the family kept its art. The last Medici heir, Anna Maria Luisa, left the entire collection to the state in 1743 on one condition: that nothing ever leave Florence. Nothing has.
- Palazzo Vecchio · The great hall was built for a republican council of five hundred, and Leonardo and Michelangelo were commissioned to paint opposing walls of it at the same time. Leonardo’s experiment with wax melted off the wall; Michelangelo never started. Vasari later covered both and may have painted over Leonardo’s remains.
- Cappelle Medicee · Michelangelo carved the tombs of two unremarkable Medici dukes and made them immortal; the figures of Night and Day, Dawn and Dusk, are more famous than anyone buried under them. He worked on it for fourteen years and left it unfinished when he fled the city.
- San Marco · Cosimo de’ Medici paid to rebuild this monastery and Fra Angelico painted a fresco in every single cell — forty-four of them, each for one monk to look at alone. Cosimo kept a cell here for himself. Savonarola later ran the city from this building and was arrested in it.
- Cappella Brancacci · Masaccio painted these frescoes at twenty-four and died at twenty-seven. They are the first paintings since antiquity in which light falls from one direction and bodies have weight — Michelangelo came here as a student to copy them, and was punched in the nose in this room during an argument.
- Palazzo Pitti · Built by a rival banker who wanted a palace with windows larger than the Medici front door, and who went bankrupt building it. The Medici bought it from his heirs, and the private corridor over the Ponte Vecchio exists so they could walk from the offices to this house without touching the street.
The other side of the river
The Oltrarno — literally "beyond the Arno" — was where the work was done: the gilders, the frame makers, the restorers, the shoemakers. It is still where they are, because the workshops are rent-controlled and have been handed down. This walk climbs out of it to the two viewpoints, and the one everybody photographs is not the better one. Two and a half hours, and the last half is uphill.
- Piazza Santo Spirito · Brunelleschi designed the church and died before the façade was built; the city never got round to it, so it is bare plaster to this day and the square likes it that way. He is buried in the crypt of the cathedral he roofed, the first architect since antiquity given that honour.
- Borgo San Frediano · The street of the workshops — gilding, marbled paper, shoe lasts, frame carving — and most of the signs are a family name and nothing else. The craft is real: the restorers here work on the city’s own paintings, and the workshops opened after the 1966 flood ruined a third of them.
- Giardino Bardini · A terraced garden on the hillside that was closed to the public for most of a century and opened in 2005. In April a hundred-metre tunnel of wisteria flowers over the path, and almost nobody is in it because everyone is at Boboli next door.
- Giardino delle Rose · A free terraced rose garden directly below the famous viewpoint, with ten bronze figures by Jean-Michel Folon scattered through it. The view is the same one and there is nobody between you and it.
- Piazzale Michelangelo · Laid out in 1869 when Florence was briefly the capital of Italy and the city tore down its medieval walls to make boulevards. The bronze David on it is a copy, and so is the one in the Signoria — the original has been indoors since 1873 because the rain was dissolving it.
- San Miniato al Monte · Begun in 1013 and one of the oldest buildings in Florence, with a green and white marble front that Michelangelo called his "beautiful country girl". The monks still sing Gregorian chant in the crypt at half past five, it is free, and the terrace outside is higher and emptier than the piazzale below.
Getting to Florence and getting around
- Santa Maria Novella · The station is a 1935 modernist landmark, and the Duomo is 8 minutes away
- Peretola Airport · Tram T2 to the station, 20 minutes, €1.70
- Busitalia terminal · Buses to Siena and San Gimignano leave from behind the station
- Piazza della Repubblica · The city buses meet here, and this was the Roman forum
Cheap eats in Florence
Eight counters where Florence eats standing. The city invented the lunch sandwich as a working meal and still treats it that way: a schiacciata stuffed at a counter, eaten on a wall, eight euros. The other local habit is lampredotto — the fourth stomach of a cow, boiled, in a bun — sold from carts since the fifteenth century.
- All’Antico Vinaio · €8 and the queue moves. Take it to the river wall
- Da Nerbone · About €6, cash, and gone by two
- Mercato Centrale · Produce from seven downstairs, counters upstairs until midnight
- Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio · Where the city shops, half the price, and done by two
- I Due Fratellini · €4 a sandwich, €2 a glass, closed Sundays
- Trattoria Mario · Lunch only, shared tables, cash, and a queue from noon
- Gelateria dei Neri · Real gelato: flat in the tub, not piled up in a mountain
- Procacci · Since 1885, and the truffle roll with a glass is the whole menu
Museums in Florence
The state museums of Florence are free on the first Sunday of every month, and they are chaos that day. The rest of the time, book a timed slot — the Uffizi and the Accademia cannot be walked into.
- Uffizi · €25, book a slot, and closed Mondays
- Galleria dell’Accademia · €16, book it, and twenty minutes is enough
- Bargello · €10, and you will have rooms to yourself
- Museo Galileo · €13, never crowded, and beside the Uffizi
- San Marco · €8, a fresco in all 44 cells, and it is silent
- Cappella Brancacci · €10, booking required, and 30 people at a time
- Palazzo Strozzi · €15, the big temporary shows, and the courtyard is free
- Museo dell’Opera del Duomo · The original Gates of Paradise, and Michelangelo’s last Pietà
Nature and day trips near Florence
- Giardino di Boboli · €10, and the Bardini garden is on the same ticket
- Giardino Bardini · A wisteria tunnel in April, and nobody is ever in it
- Giardino delle Rose · Free, 350 kinds of rose, and the same view as above it
- Parco delle Cascine · Free, and a long market along it on Tuesdays
- Fiesole · Bus 7 from the station, 20 minutes, €1.70
- Forte di Belvedere · Free when open, and the walls are the walk
- Chianti · The hills between here and Siena, and a car is the only way
- Giardino dell’Orticoltura · Free, an 1880 glasshouse in it, and locals only
Things to do in Florence with kids
- Palazzo Vecchio · €12.50, and the tower is €12.50 more
- Museo Galileo · €13, working models you turn, and an armillary sphere
- Mercato Nuovo · Rub the bronze boar’s nose and drop a coin. Free
- Giardino di Boboli · €10, a grotto, a maze and space to run
- Campanile di Giotto · 414 steps with landings on the way, and no booking needed
- Parco delle Cascine · Free, playgrounds, and the only real grass in the city
Live music in Florence
- Teatro della Pergola · From €20, and the season is mostly spoken theatre
- Teatro del Maggio · The opera house, built 2011, and the roof terrace is open
- Santo Spirito · Live music on the church steps most summer evenings, free
- Manifattura Tabacchi · A 1930s tobacco factory, now concerts and a summer cinema
- San Niccolò · Small bars under the old walls, and music in several
- Stadio Artemio Franchi · Fiorentina, and the 1932 concrete stand is a listed building
Nightlife in Florence
- Piazza Santo Spirito · Everyone sits on the steps with a €4 glass, until late
- Le Volpi e l’Uva · €5 a glass, and it closes at nine
- Sant’Ambrogio · The square fills after the market closes, and stays local
- San Niccolò · The last quarter where bars stay open past one
- Oltrarno · Cross the bridge at night and the prices halve
- Caffè Gilli · Since 1733, and a negroni was invented in this city
Frequently asked questions about Florence
What is there to see in Florence?
The top sights in Florence are Duomo, Brunelleschi’s dome and Giotto’s campanile. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Florence?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Florence without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Florence?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Florence, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The dome nobody knew how to build.
How do you get to Florence and get around?
The main ways are Santa Maria Novella, Peretola Airport and Busitalia terminal. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Florence, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Florence that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Florence for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.