FLORENCE · ITALY
The galleries, the dome, the Tuscan hills.
Michelangelo’s David, the Uffizi, the climb up Brunelleschi’s dome and a Tuscan cooking class. Then the days out, Chianti, Siena, Pisa and the Cinque Terre coast.
Only here
Three things you can only do in Florence.
Galleries and old towns fill every city in Italy. The real David, the Medici’s own Uffizi and the dome Brunelleschi taught the world to build are Florence, and nowhere else.
The original
Michelangelo’s David
Every postcard and every copy in the piazzas is exactly that, a copy. The five-metre David that Michelangelo cut from a single flawed block of Carrara marble between 1501 and 1504 stands in one room of the Accademia, under a skylight built for him alone. You walk the length of the gallery and he keeps getting taller.
- 1 Florence: Timed Entrance Ticket to Michelangelo’s David
- 2 Florence: Michelangelo’s David Skip-the-Line Entry Ticket
- 3 Florence Accademia Gallery Tour with Entrance Ticket Included
The Renaissance itself
The Uffizi Gallery
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera hang a few rooms from Leonardo, Raphael, Caravaggio and Titian, in the order they were painted. The Uffizi is not a museum about the Renaissance. It is the Renaissance, still kept in the Medici’s own gallery above the Arno.
- 1 Florence: Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry Ticket
- 2 Florence: Uffizi Priority Ticket & Masterpieces Audio App
- 3 Florence: Skip-the-Line Uffizi Small Group Tour
The impossible dome
Brunelleschi’s Dome
No one had raised a dome this wide since antiquity, and no one quite knew how. Brunelleschi built it with no centring frame beneath it, four million bricks laid in a self-supporting herringbone spiral. You climb 463 steps between its two shells to stand on the lantern, level with the hills.
- 1 Florence: Duomo Cathedral Guided Tour
- 2 Florence: Brunelleschi’s Dome Climb Entry Ticket & Duomo
- 3 Florence: Duomo Guided Tour with Optional Dome Climb Upgrade
Start here
The one almost everyone books first.
More Florence trips are planned around this single ticket than anything else.
The classics
Florence’s Most Popular Tours & Tickets
The Uffizi, the Accademia, the Duomo and the great Tuscan day trips. The bookings most people come to Florence for.
Where to begin
The days a Florence trip is built around.
The Uffizi and the Accademia, the climb up the dome, a day among the Chianti vines, a Tuscan cooking class and the great hill-town day trips. The essentials, and the best way to do each.
The big day out
Which day trip into Tuscany?
Florence is the door to the rest of Tuscany, an hour or two from the vineyards, the walled hill towns and the coast. Three classic days out, depending on what you are after.
The Tuscan table
Florence eats well, and teaches you how.
Between the stalls of the Mercato Centrale and the trattorie of the Oltrarno, this is a city built around its lunch. Roll fresh pasta with a Florentine cook, fold gelato by hand, or sit down to ribollita, bistecca alla fiorentina and a glass of Chianti Classico.
Read the guide: the best cooking classes in Florence →The river
The Arno, and the bridge that survived everything.
The Ponte Vecchio has carried Florence across the Arno since 1345, its goldsmiths’ shops still hanging out over the water, the one bridge the retreating army left standing in 1944. Cross it at dusk, when the river turns to gold and the day finally slows down.
Walking tours of Florence →The Italian way
See it from a vintage Fiat 500.
Some of the best afternoons here happen at twenty miles an hour. Convoy a restored Fiat 500 up to the panoramic terraces above the city, or ride a Vespa out through the vineyards to a winery lunch. The classic Italian way to put the map down and just drive.
- 1 Florence Vespa Tour: Tuscan Hills and Italian Cuisine
- 2 Chianti Vespa Tour with Lunch from Florence & E-car Option
- 3 Self-Drive Vintage Fiat 500 Tour from Florence: Tuscan Hills and Italian Cuisine
The queues
The one thing that can ruin a Florence day.
The lines at the Uffizi and the Accademia can run two or three hours in high season, and the Duomo dome climb sells out days ahead. A timed-entry ticket walks you straight past all of it. If you book one thing before you fly, make it this.
See all 115 skip-the-line tickets →By sight
Pick a Florence landmark.
The Uffizi for the paintings. The Accademia for the David. The Duomo for the climb. Pitti and Boboli for the palace and its gardens. Palazzo Vecchio for the frescoed halls. And the smaller museums for everything else.
By type
Pick how to see the city.
On foot for the history. Skip-the-line when your days are short. A cooking class or a wine tour for the table. A Vespa, a bike, or an audio guide at your own pace.
Plan it
Three perfect days in Florence.
Never been? Here is a first trip that hits the essentials without a wasted hour, from the galleries to the hills.
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