Things to Do in Florence

The Duomo complex. The best value of anything in Florence, and the thing to organise the trip around.

It is not one building but a set of them sold together: the cathedral, Brunelleschi’s dome, Giotto’s campanile, the baptistery, the crypt beneath the church and the Opera del Duomo museum. The pass covers the group across a few days, and the museum in particular is consistently underrated — it holds the original sculpture taken off the exterior, including work most visitors assume they are looking at outside.

The dome climb is the part with the constraint. A reserved time, an identity document, several hundred steps and no lift: it is not a casual add-on, and it is the one thing here that genuinely cannot be improvised. The campanile gives a comparable view with the dome itself in it, which the dome cannot offer — the same argument that applies to bell towers everywhere.

The Uffizi. If you visit one museum in Florence, this is the one — a purpose-built Medici gallery holding the most concentrated collection of Renaissance painting anywhere.

It is also large, and the standard mistake is treating it as a corridor to be completed. Two to three hours with a shortlist beats four hours of dutiful walking. Go early or late in the day rather than at midday, and accept that you will walk past a great deal.

The Vasari Corridor — the elevated passage running from the gallery across the river — reopened after roughly a decade closed for restoration. It needs its own ticket, which a standard Uffizi admission does not include, and booking is compulsory with limited places. It is a genuinely unusual thing to walk, and it is also the most recently changed item on this page: confirm its current status and ticketing on the gallery’s own site before counting on it.

The Accademia. Worth going to, and the most over-weighted stop in Florence.

David is genuinely worth seeing in person. The scale does not survive photography, and the unfinished Michelangelo sculptures in the same hall — figures half-emerged from raw marble — are arguably the more interesting room. But this is a small museum built around one object, and it draws queues out of proportion to how long you will spend inside.

Treat it accordingly: book a slot, go in, give it an hour, and do not plan a day around it. If you are choosing between this and the Uffizi on a single-day visit, the Uffizi is the better use of the time unless David is specifically the thing you came for.

Palazzo Vecchio. The civic heart of the city, still the town hall, and the most reliably under-visited major sight in Florence.

Where the Uffizi shows you what the Medici collected, this shows you how they governed — a fortified seat of government with a vast painted hall at its centre. It rarely requires booking, which after everything above is a relief, and the tower gives another view over the square.

The piazza outside is free and open, and the sculpture in the loggia beside it is a genuine open-air gallery that most people walk through without stopping.

Santa Croce. A Franciscan church on the eastern side of the centre that functions as the city’s pantheon — Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli are among those buried or commemorated inside.

It takes an hour, it needs no booking, and it is the best single antidote to museum fatigue: frescoed chapels, a large cloister, and a quiet that the Duomo no longer has.

The Oltrarno. The south bank, across the river, and the half of central Florence that has not been given over to visitors.

Artisan workshops still work here — gilders, framers, leather and paper — alongside the churches, the Brancacci Chapel frescoes and the piazzas that fill up in the evening rather than at noon. Cross a bridge and the volume drops within a couple of streets.

Give it an afternoon and, if you can, an evening. It is also the strongest argument for where to sleep, which is the subject of its own guide below.

A view over the city. Florence is ringed by hills on the south side, and the walk up to the terraces above the Oltrarno is the one free thing here that competes with the ticketed sights.

It puts the whole centre in one frame — the dome, the campanile, the tower of Palazzo Vecchio and the river — and it costs a climb rather than a reservation. Go towards the end of the day. The church higher up the same hill is worth the extra few minutes of ascent and is usually far quieter than the terrace below it.

Markets and eating. Florence is a Tuscan city before it is a museum city, and its food is regional and specific rather than generically Italian.

The central market is the obvious entry point and worth an hour, though the upper floor is now firmly a food hall for visitors. The more useful habit is to eat away from the sights: the streets around Santa Croce and most of the Oltrarno are where the ratio of locals to tourists changes.

Avoid anywhere with a photographic menu, a person outside inviting you in, or a view of the Duomo. Those three filters remove almost every bad meal available in the city centre.