Photo: Florence sits in a bowl of green hills on the Arno, and in the 1400s its bankers, guilds and artists started the Renaissance here. The historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982, is small: from the main station to the Ponte Vecchio is about a 15-minute walk, past the cathedral, Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi. The food is plain and very good, the hills are close, and the evening light over the river is the reason everyone climbs to Piazzale Michelangelo.
This guide covers when to go, where to stay, what to see, a walk up to San Miniato, a morning in Fiesole, what to eat, and the history, art and customs that make the city make sense.
What Florence is good for
Friends' trips
Share a bistecca sold by the kilo, climb to Piazzale Michelangelo for sunset, then find a table on Piazza Santo Spirito. A day of wine tastings in the Chianti hills, under an hour away, is an easy group plan.
Bachelorette and bachelor weekends
Florence does long dinners and wine better than clubs. Book a Chianti tasting or a cooking class, an aperitivo with a view of the dome, then the bars of Santo Spirito, Sant’Ambrogio and San Niccolò.
Weddings and honeymoons
Couples from abroad can marry in a civil ceremony in Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall, in the red-walled Sala Rossa or one of its frescoed halls, and villas in the hills around the city host many weddings. For a honeymoon, add a few days in the Chianti or Siena.
Couples
Sunset from San Miniato or Piazzale Michelangelo, a slow walk along the Arno as the lights come on, and dinner in the lanes of San Niccolò.
Families
Climb the dome or Giotto’s bell tower, see Galileo’s telescopes at the Museo Galileo, let the children run in the Boboli Gardens and finish every day with gelato. Palazzo Vecchio runs family tours of its secret passages.
Solo travel
Small, safe and easy to walk, with market counters and wine bars where eating alone is normal. A food tour or a cooking class is an easy way to meet people.
Food lovers
Bistecca alla fiorentina, lampredotto from a street cart, ribollita in winter, schiacciata sandwiches at lunch, and Chianti from the hills to the south.
History and art
Brunelleschi’s dome, Michelangelo’s David, the Uffizi and the Medici Chapels, with frescoes by Giotto, Masaccio and Fra Angelico in the churches and convents.
Plan your trip
When to go
Spring (April to June) and autumn (September and October) bring warm days and cooler evenings. July and August are hot in the river valley, often around 35°C, and the big sights are crowded; many Florentines leave in August. Winter is cool and damp, with the shortest lines of the year.
How long to stay
Three days covers the Duomo, the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Oltrarno at a human pace. Four days adds the Bargello, the Medici Chapels and a morning in Fiesole. With five, add a day trip to Siena, to Pisa and Lucca, or to the Chianti hills.
Getting there
Florence Airport (FLR), at Peretola, is small and close: the T2 tram runs from the terminal to Piazza San Marco, on the edge of the historic center, in about half an hour, and a taxi takes about 20 minutes. Pisa Airport (PSA), with more budget flights, is about an hour away by the Pisa Mover shuttle and a train. High-speed trains reach Santa Maria Novella station from Rome in about an hour and a half, from Bologna in under 40 minutes, and from Milan and Venice in about two hours.
Getting around
Walk. The center is small, flat and largely closed to traffic, and cameras fine cars that drive into the restricted zone without a permit, so leave any rental car outside. Two tram lines link the station with the airport and the suburbs, and buses climb to the hills, Fiesole included. Taxis wait at ranks or come when called.
Tickets
Book the Uffizi and the Accademia ahead on the official sites; both close on Mondays, as does Palazzo Pitti. The dome climb runs on timed slots, booked with a pass that also covers the bell tower, the Baptistery and the cathedral museum, while the cathedral itself is free. State museums are free on the first Sunday of the month, with long lines to match.
Money and tipping
Tipping is not expected: rounding up or leaving a euro or two for good service is plenty. Many restaurants add a small cover charge (coperto) per person, and coffee standing at the bar costs less than sitting at a table. Hotels add a city tax per person per night, higher for more stars, for up to seven nights.
Weather, month by month
Spring
March to May
Mild, with rainy spells in March and April, and warm by May, when the iris and rose gardens below Piazzale Michelangelo are in flower.
Summer
June to August
Hot and often humid in the valley, with days above 35°C in July and August and warm nights. See sights early, rest after lunch, go out late.
Autumn
September to November
Warm Septembers and golden Octobers, with the grape harvest in the Chianti. October and November are the wettest months of the year.
Winter
December to February
Cool and damp, around 10 to 12°C by day and near freezing on clear nights. Quiet streets and short lines, except around Christmas and New Year.
Top sights
01The Duomo and Brunelleschi’s dome
The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore was begun in 1296, and its dome, by Filippo Brunelleschi, was finished in 1436. It is still the largest masonry dome ever built. The cathedral is free to enter; a pass covers the climb up the dome, Giotto’s bell tower, the Baptistery and the cathedral museum, which keeps Ghiberti’s original Gates of Paradise.
The dome is 463 steps with no lift, by timed slot only: book ahead. The Baptistery’s mosaic ceiling is under restoration until about 2028.
Photo: Zairon, CC BY 4.0
02The Uffizi
Giorgio Vasari built it from 1560 as offices, uffizi, for the Medici government, and the family filled its top floor with art. It is now one of the world’s great galleries: Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo’s Annunciation, Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo, Titian’s Venus of Urbino and three Caravaggios.
Closed on Mondays. Book a timed entry and take the earliest you can.
Photo: Armin Kleiner, CC BY-SA 4.0
03The Accademia and David
Michelangelo carved David between 1501 and 1504 from a block of marble two other sculptors had abandoned. It stood outside Palazzo Vecchio until 1873, when it was moved here to protect it, and a copy has stood in its place since 1910. His unfinished Prisoners line the hall that leads to it.
Closed on Mondays. Book ahead, and leave time for the instruments made for the Medici court, in the same museum.
Photo: Livioandronico2013, CC BY-SA 4.0
04Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio
The fortress-like palace, begun in 1299, is still the town hall. Inside, the Hall of the Five Hundred was built in 1494 for the republic’s Great Council; Leonardo and Michelangelo were both hired to paint battles on its walls, and neither finished. Outside, the Loggia dei Lanzi is an open-air gallery of statues, among them Cellini’s Perseus.
Climb the Arnolfo tower for a view down into the square and across to the dome.
Photo: Eusebius, CC BY 3.0
05The Ponte Vecchio
The bridge was rebuilt in stone in 1345 after a flood, and in August 1944 it was the only one the retreating German army did not blow up. Butchers worked in its shops until 1593, when Grand Duke Ferdinando I moved them out and let in goldsmiths, and jewelers still trade there. Above them runs the Vasari Corridor, built in 1565 so the Medici could walk from Palazzo Vecchio to Palazzo Pitti without stepping into the street.
The Vasari Corridor reopened in December 2024 after eight years of works, for small groups booked with an Uffizi ticket.
Photo: Jebulon, CC0
06Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens
Begun for the banker Luca Pitti in 1458 and bought by Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici, in 1549, the palace was home to Tuscany’s rulers for three centuries. Its galleries hold Raphael and Titian, and behind it the Boboli Gardens climb the hill with grottoes, fountains, statues and an amphitheater around an Egyptian obelisk.
The palace galleries close on Mondays; the gardens close on the first and last Monday of the month.
Photo: Txllxt, CC BY-SA 4.0
07Santa Croce
The great Franciscan church, begun in 1294, holds the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and Rossini, and a memorial to Dante, who is buried in Ravenna. Giotto painted two of its chapels, and Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel stands in the cloister.
There is an entry fee, and on Sundays the church opens to visitors only in the afternoon.
Photo: Fred Romero from Paris, France, CC BY 2.0
08San Lorenzo and the Medici Chapels
San Lorenzo, rebuilt by Brunelleschi from 1419, was the Medici family’s parish church. Behind it, the Medici Chapels hold the domed Chapel of the Princes, lined with colored marble and stone, and Michelangelo’s New Sacristy, where the figures of Dawn, Dusk, Night and Day recline on the family tombs.
The chapels have their own entrance at the back of the church, on Piazza di Madonna degli Aldobrandini.
Photo: Richard Mortel from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, CC BY 2.0
Three hidden gems
Up to San Miniato, the long way
From the Ponte Vecchio up a steep lane of garden walls, along the old city walls to a Romanesque church on the hill, and down to the river for a glass of wine.
From the south end of the Ponte Vecchio, turn left along Via de’ Bardi and climb Costa San Giorgio, a steep lane between high garden walls. At the bottom of the lane, a gate leads into the Bardini Garden, whose wisteria tunnel flowers from mid-April. Higher up, a frescoed house carries a plaque saying that from here Galileo, watching the stars move, worked out that the Earth moves too.
At the top stands Forte di Belvedere, the star-shaped fort Bernardo Buontalenti built for Grand Duke Ferdinando I in the 1590s, open in summer for exhibitions and its terrace view. From the gate beside it, follow Via di Belvedere, a quiet lane along the city walls of the 1300s with olive groves on the far side, down to the small gate of Porta San Miniato.
Through the gate, Via del Monte alle Croci climbs past the stations of the Cross to San Salvatore al Monte, a plain church Michelangelo is said to have called his pretty country girl, and on up a stone stair to San Miniato al Monte. Begun in 1013, it is faced in white and green marble, with a gold mosaic of Christ on the front, and Olivetan monks have lived here since 1373. Carlo Collodi, who wrote Pinocchio, is buried in the cemetery around it.
Just below the church, Piazzale Michelangelo was laid out in 1869 by Giuseppe Poggi, with a bronze copy of David in the middle and the whole city spread out beneath it. Come for sunset, with half of Florence. Below the terrace, the Iris Garden opens from late April to about 20 May, and the Rose Garden, free all year, flowers in May.
Go down the Rampe, the stairways and fountains Poggi built into the hillside in the 1870s, to Porta San Niccolò, a gate of 1324 and the only one not cut down in the 1500s, when the others were lowered against cannon fire. Via di San Niccolò, behind it, is lined with wine bars: the place to end.
Where to stay
Pick the neighborhood first, then the hotel. Each link opens a map of places to stay around it.
Duomo and Signoria
First visitThe historic core between the cathedral, Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi. Everything is a short walk away and the streets stay lively at night; rooms cost more and the lanes are crowded by day.
See hotels in Duomo and SignoriaSanta Croce
NightlifeAround the great Franciscan church east of the center: wine bars, leather workshops and squares that fill on summer evenings, ten minutes from the Duomo.
See hotels in Santa CroceSant’Ambrogio
Food loversA market neighborhood just beyond Santa Croce, with the covered Sant’Ambrogio market, small trattorias and a local evening crowd.
See hotels in Sant’AmbrogioOltrarno
Local lifeAcross the river: Santo Spirito and San Frediano, artisans’ workshops, Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, and Piazza Santo Spirito, full of bar tables on summer evenings.
See hotels in OltrarnoSan Niccolò
CouplesA short, quiet street of old houses and wine bars below San Miniato, with the stairs up to Piazzale Michelangelo on the doorstep. There are few hotels, so book early.
See hotels in San NiccolòSanta Maria Novella
Budget and short staysAround the main station and the San Lorenzo market: the easiest arrival and the most hotels for the money, with a busier, plainer feel after dark.
See hotels in Santa Maria NovellaThe 10 best budget hotels
Well-reviewed hotels at the lower end of Florence’s prices, best-reviewed first. On a weeknight in November 2026 they cost about €80 to €135 for two; prices change daily, so check your own dates.
01
02The Market Urban Hotel
9.8870 reviewsSanta Maria Novella
5 min walk to Santa Maria Novella station
See prices
03Luxury B&B La Dimora Degli Angeli
9.62,545 reviewsDuomo and Signoria
3 min walk to the Duomo
See prices
04Casa Thiele alla Signoria
9.6451 reviewsDuomo and Signoria
5 min walk to the Ponte Vecchio
See prices
05
06Villa Neroli - Place of Charme
9.24,405 reviews1.3 km east of Campo di Marte
3.2 km from Santa Croce
See prices
07c-hotels Joy
9.22,502 reviewsSanta Maria Novella
3 min walk to Santa Maria Novella station
See prices
08c-hotels Club
9.22,263 reviewsSanta Maria Novella
4 min walk to Santa Maria Novella station
See prices
09
10Hotel La Fortezza
9.21,219 reviewsFortezza da Basso
13 min walk to Santa Maria Novella station
See prices
Hotel links go to Stay22. If you book, we may earn a commission, at no cost to you.
Food and drink
Florentine cooking is plain and generous: beans, bread, olive oil, grilled meat and the vegetables of the season. The bread is baked without salt, and yesterday’s loaf goes into soups and salads. Lunch runs from about 12:30 and dinner from about 7:30pm.
Bistecca alla fiorentina
A T-bone as thick as three fingers, grilled over coals, served rare and sold by weight. One is usually a kilo or more, for two.
Photo: Microsoikos at Italian Wikipedia, Public domain
Lampredotto
The fourth stomach of the cow, slow-cooked in broth and sliced into a roll with green sauce and chili oil, sold from street carts. Ask for the roll dipped, bagnato, in the broth.
Photo: Lamacchiacosta, CC BY-SA 4.0
Ribollita
A thick winter soup of bread, white beans and cavolo nero, cooked one day and boiled again the next, which is what the name means.
Photo: Xaura, CC BY-SA 3.0
Pappa al pomodoro
Stale bread cooked down with tomatoes, garlic, basil and olive oil into a thick summer soup, eaten warm or at room temperature.
Photo: Karl Cossio from San Diego, United States, CC BY 2.0
Panzanella
A summer salad of soaked stale bread, tomatoes, red onion and basil, dressed with oil and vinegar.
Photo: LupoCapra at Italian Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Pappardelle al cinghiale
Wide ribbons of egg pasta with a slow ragù of wild boar from the Tuscan hills.
Photo: Luistxo, CC BY-SA 3.0
Schiacciata
Tuscan flatbread, thin, crisp and shiny with olive oil and salt. Split and filled with salumi and cheese, it is the city’s lunch on the go.
Photo: Lianguanlun, CC BY 4.0
Crostini neri
Toasted bread spread with a pâté of chicken livers, capers and anchovy, the usual start to a Tuscan meal.
Photo: 007007wiki at English Wikipedia, Public domainEat lampredotto from the carts in the center or at the stalls of the Mercato Centrale, whose upper floor is a food hall, and shop with locals at the Sant’Ambrogio market. For dinner, try the trattorias of Santo Spirito, San Frediano and Sant’Ambrogio. For gelato, look for covered metal tubs and colors found in nature.
The dome no one knew how to build
For decades the new cathedral stood open to the sky. How a goldsmith who had lost a contest for a pair of bronze doors covered it, and changed how Europe built.
In 1401 the cloth merchants’ guild held a contest for a new pair of bronze doors for the Baptistery. Each finalist had a year to make a trial panel of the same scene, Abraham about to sacrifice his son Isaac. Lorenzo Ghiberti, in his early twenties, won. Filippo Brunelleschi, a goldsmith, lost, and by the account of his first biographer went to Rome with his friend Donatello to measure the ruins of the ancient city. Both panels survive, side by side in the Bargello.
Across the square, the city had a bigger problem. Work on the new cathedral had begun in 1296, and in 1367 Florence approved a plan for an eight-sided dome on a scale no one had tried since antiquity, with no flying buttresses to hold it up. By the early 1400s the walls were rising to meet it, and no one knew how to vault an opening more than 40 meters across, high above the floor. A dome was normally built over a wooden frame, and no timbers could be found long enough to span it.
In 1418 the cathedral works called for designs, and Brunelleschi promised to raise the dome without a frame. Giorgio Vasari later told how he settled the argument. He challenged his rivals to stand an egg on its end, and when none could, he cracked its base on the table; they said they could have done that, and he answered that they would say the same once they had seen his plan. He won, though the city made Ghiberti his partner in the work, to Brunelleschi’s annoyance.
Work began in 1420. Brunelleschi built two shells, a thick inner dome and a lighter outer one, tied together by ribs and by rings of stone and timber. The bricks were laid in a herringbone pattern, so that each new course locked into the last and the dome held itself up as it rose. To lift the materials, he designed a hoist turned by oxen, with gears that reversed the load without turning the animals round.
Brunelleschi’s answer was a dome that carried its own weight as it went up, ring by ring, with nothing underneath it.
On 25 March 1436, the Florentine New Year, Pope Eugene IV consecrated the finished cathedral. Brunelleschi lived to see work begin on the lantern on top and died in April 1446; others finished it. In 1471 the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio raised the gilded copper ball and cross to the very top, with a young Leonardo da Vinci among its apprentices.
Brunelleschi was buried in the cathedral, and his tomb was found under the floor in 1972. Inside the dome, Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari painted a vast Last Judgment between 1572 and 1579. Climb the 463 steps today and the path runs between the two shells, past the herringbone brick, before it comes out on the terrace at the foot of the lantern.
Art
Botticelli and the Uffizi
The Birth of Venus and Primavera hang in the same rooms, with Leonardo’s Annunciation and Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo a few rooms on. Go early in the day.
Masaccio and perspective
Masaccio’s Trinity in Santa Maria Novella, painted around 1427, is one of the first paintings built on Brunelleschi’s rules of perspective. Across the river, his frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, cleaned in a restoration finished in 2024, taught the next generation to paint the human figure.
Fra Angelico at San Marco
In the convent of San Marco, Fra Angelico and his assistants painted a fresco in each friar’s cell, and his Annunciation waits at the top of the stairs.
Sculpture at the Bargello
The old police headquarters and prison now holds Renaissance sculpture: Donatello’s bronze David, the two panels from the 1401 contest for the Baptistery doors, and early marbles by Michelangelo.
Modern Florence
Palazzo Strozzi stages big temporary exhibitions in a Renaissance palace, and the Museo Novecento, on Piazza Santa Maria Novella, shows Italian art of the 20th century.
The city that exiled its poet
Written Italian grew out of the Florentine of Dante and Boccaccio. The city banished the first of them, and has asked Ravenna for his bones more than once since.
Dante Alighieri
1265 to 1321
Born in Florence, Dante met Beatrice Portinari as a boy and wrote the Vita Nuova about her. He served in the city’s government, and in 1302, while he was away, the faction in power sentenced him to exile, and then to death if he came back. He never did. He wrote the Divine Comedy in exile and died in Ravenna, where he is buried. Some 34 marble plaques, put up around Florence by 1907, carry his lines on the places they name.
Giovanni Boccaccio
1313 to 1375
Boccaccio set the Decameron in the plague year of 1348: ten young Florentines leave the city for a villa in the hills and tell a hundred stories over ten days. He also wrote the first life of Dante and, in 1373, began the first public lectures on the Divine Comedy, in a Florence church.
Niccolò Machiavelli
1469 to 1527
Machiavelli spent fourteen years as a secretary and envoy of the Florentine republic. When the Medici returned in 1512 he lost his post, and in 1513, on his farm at Sant’Andrea in Percussina in the hills to the south, he wrote The Prince, published five years after his death. He is buried in Santa Croce.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806 to 1861
She eloped with the poet Robert Browning in 1846, and the next year they settled in rooms at Casa Guidi, near Palazzo Pitti. There she wrote Casa Guidi Windows, about the Tuscany of 1848, and the verse novel Aurora Leigh. She died there in 1861 and lies in the English Cemetery, under a tomb designed by Frederic Leighton.
Thou shalt abandon everything beloved
Most tenderly, and this the arrow is
Which first the bow of banishment shoots forth.
Thou shalt have proof how savoureth of salt
The bread of others, and how hard a road
The going down and up another’s stairs.
Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto XVII (about 1320), translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867)
Culture
The Scoppio del Carro
On Easter Sunday, white oxen pull a tall cart packed with fireworks to the cathedral door, and a rocket shaped like a dove, lit at the altar during Mass, runs along a wire and sets it off.
Calcio storico
In June, teams from the four historic quarters play a rough mix of football, rugby and wrestling, in costume and on sand, in Piazza Santa Croce. The final is on 24 June, the feast of Saint John, the city’s patron.
The Rificolona
On the evening of 7 September, children carry paper lanterns through the streets, a custom that goes back to country people walking into town at night for the next day’s fair.
Fashion and craft
Gucci was founded here in 1921, Ferragamo keeps its museum in a medieval palace by the river, and the Pitti Uomo menswear fair fills the Fortezza da Basso twice a year. In the Oltrarno, gilders, bookbinders and leather workers still keep open workshops.
Florence on film
James Ivory’s A Room with a View (1985), from E. M. Forster’s novel of 1908, begins in a pensione with no view of the Arno and has its best-known scenes in Piazza della Signoria and Santa Croce.
Football
Fiorentina play in purple at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, a 1930s stadium by Pier Luigi Nervi in Campo di Marte.
Music and nights out
Where opera began
Around 1600, a circle of Florentine poets and musicians set out to revive Greek drama, and Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, staged at Palazzo Pitti in 1600 for a Medici wedding, is the oldest opera whose music survives.
The piano
Bartolomeo Cristofori, keeper of the Medici instruments, built the first piano around 1700. The music museum inside the Accademia has instruments he made for the court, and a viola and a cello Stradivari made for the Medici.
Concerts
The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, one of Europe’s oldest music festivals, has run since 1933 and performs in the new opera house by the Cascine park. The Orchestra della Toscana is based at the Teatro Verdi.
Nights out
Start with an aperitivo by the river or on Piazza Santo Spirito, then move on to the bars of Santo Spirito, Sant’Ambrogio and San Niccolò. In summer, temporary bars open along the Arno.
Nature and day trips
The Boboli Gardens
The Medici garden behind Palazzo Pitti: grottoes, statues, a long avenue of cypresses and views over the city from the top of the hill.
Smaller gardens
The Bardini Garden, with its wisteria in April, the Rose Garden below Piazzale Michelangelo, free all year, and the Iris Garden beside it, open from late April to about 20 May.
The Cascine
The city’s largest park runs for more than three kilometers along the Arno west of the center, with a big street market on Tuesday mornings.
The hills
Fiesole and Settignano, on the hills to the north and east, are short bus rides away, with paths through olive groves and views back over the city.
The Arno
Walk the riverbanks at dusk, when the bridges turn gold, or watch the rowing club at work on the water below the Uffizi.
Day trips
Pisa is about an hour away by train, Siena and Lucca a little more, and the Chianti wine towns, such as Greve, under an hour by car.
A morning in Fiesole
The hill town above Florence is older than the city below it. Bus 7 climbs there in about half an hour from the station and Piazza San Marco: come for a Roman theater, a quiet cathedral and the view back over Florence.
People and customs
Meal times
Lunch runs from about 12:30 to 2:30pm and dinner from about 7:30pm. Many restaurants close between the two.
Dress for churches
Cover shoulders and knees for the cathedral and most churches, or you may be turned away at the door.
Coffee rules
Cappuccino is a morning drink. After a meal, order un caffè, an espresso, and drink it standing at the bar.
The cover charge
A coperto, a small charge per person for bread and the table, is normal and shown on the menu. It is not a tip.
Sundays and August
Some shops and family restaurants close on Sundays and for part of August. State museums are free on the first Sunday of the month, with lines to match.
A few words
Buongiorno, grazie and per favore go a long way, and it is polite to greet the owner when you walk into a shop.
Questions
How many days do you need in Florence?
Three days covers the Duomo, the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Oltrarno. Four days adds the Bargello, the Medici Chapels and Fiesole, and five leaves room for a day trip to Siena, Pisa or the Chianti.
Where should I stay in Florence on a first visit?
Between the Duomo and Piazza della Signoria, where everything is a short walk. Santa Croce and Sant’Ambrogio are livelier and good for food, the Oltrarno feels most local, and the area around Santa Maria Novella station has the most hotels for the money.
When is the best time to visit Florence?
April to June and September to October, when days are warm and evenings cool. July and August are hot and crowded, and winter is cool, quiet and cheaper.
How do I get from the airport to central Florence?
From Florence Airport, the T2 tram reaches Piazza San Marco in about half an hour, and a taxi takes about 20 minutes. From Pisa Airport, take the Pisa Mover shuttle to Pisa Centrale and a train to Santa Maria Novella, about an hour in all.
Do I need to book the Uffizi, the Accademia and the dome?
Yes. Book the Uffizi and the Accademia on their official sites and take an early slot, and book the dome climb, which runs on timed entries. Both galleries close on Mondays.
Is Florence good for a bachelorette or a group trip?
Yes, as a food and wine city rather than a club city: a Chianti tasting day, a cooking class, aperitivo with a view of the dome and the bars of Santo Spirito and Sant’Ambrogio.
Plan Florence with your group
Everyone swipes on the sights they want. SwipeSights builds the days around the picks, in walking order.
