FLORENCE · ITALY
The whole Renaissance, in one walkable city.
Michelangelo’s David and the Uffizi, Brunelleschi’s dome and the climb up inside it, hand-rolled pasta in the Oltrarno, and the Chianti hills a short drive past the gates.
Only here
Three things that exist nowhere else.
Galleries and cathedrals fill every Italian city. But the David, the room that holds Botticelli’s Venus, and the dome Brunelleschi raised without scaffolding are singular, and all three are within a ten-minute walk of each other.
One block of marble
Michelangelo's David
Five metres of Carrara marble, carved by a twenty-six-year-old between 1501 and 1504, and standing in the Accademia ever since. Photographs do not prepare you for the scale or the veins in the hands. The copy in the piazza is good; the original is something else.
- 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
Where it all began
Botticelli at the Uffizi
The Birth of Venus, the Primavera, Leonardo, Raphael and Caravaggio, hung in the offices the Medici built on the Arno. No other building on earth holds this much of the Renaissance in one set of rooms. Book the timed entry; the queue without it can run for hours.
- 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
An impossible dome
Brunelleschi's Cupola
The largest brick dome ever raised, built without scaffolding from the ground and still unmatched six hundred years on. You climb 463 steps in the gap between its two shells, past Vasari’s painted Last Judgement, to the lantern and the whole city below.
- 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
If you only book one thing in Florence.
More visitors plan a day around this than anything else in the city. A safe place to begin.
The classics
Florence's Most Popular Tours
The David, the Uffizi, the Duomo climb and a Tuscan day trip. The handful of bookings most visitors come to Florence for.
Where to begin
The experiences a Florence trip is built around.
The David and the Uffizi, the Duomo and its dome, the Chianti cellar doors, a kitchen full of fresh pasta, and a day out into the Tuscan hills. The bookings most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The first decision
How to see the David and the Uffizi.
The two galleries everyone comes for, and the choice that trips most first-timers up: a plain skip-the-line ticket, a guided visit, or both in a single day. Here is how each one actually works.
The Chianti hills
Vineyards a half-hour from the Duomo.
Chianti Classico fills the hills between Florence and Siena: stone farmhouses, castle estates and family cellar doors, all under the black-rooster mark. Most trips run as a half or full day from the city, with a long lunch among the vines and two or three tastings of Sangiovese.
Read the guide: the best Tuscan wine tours →The Duomo
Climb the dome they said couldn’t be built.
For a century the cathedral stood open to the sky because no one knew how to span it. Brunelleschi solved it with a double shell of herringbone brick and no scaffolding at all. You climb the 463 steps in the gap between the two shells, past Vasari’s Last Judgement, out to the lantern and the whole red-tiled city.
Duomo & dome climb tickets →In the kitchen
Roll the pasta, then sit down and eat it.
Half of Florence is edible. A cooking class usually starts at the Sant’Ambrogio market, moves to a kitchen for fresh pasta, ravioli or gelato by hand, and ends at a long table with the wine. The food tours work the other way: bistecca, schiacciata, cheese and a glass, one counter at a time.
- 1 Florence: Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
- 2 Florence Pizza or Pasta Class with Gelato Making at a Tuscan Farm
- 3 Florence: Pasta & Tiramisu Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
By their makers
Florence, told through four people.
The city is small enough to read as a single story: the sculptor, the painter, the inventor and the family who bankrolled them all. Follow whichever one pulls you in.
Sculpture
MichelangeloThe David at the Accademia, and the unfinished Slaves still half-locked in their marble.
Painting
BotticelliThe Birth of Venus and the Primavera, in the Medici gallery built to hold them.
Invention
LeonardoThe flying machines and the notebooks, rebuilt to turn and crank by hand.
Power
The MediciThe banking dynasty who paid for all of it, told through their palaces and plots.
Out of town
Tuscany starts at the city gates.
Florence sits at the centre of an easy day-trip wheel. The Leaning Tower at Pisa is an hour west; Siena’s shell-shaped square and the towers of San Gimignano lie south through the vineyards; and the five cliff villages of the Cinque Terre are a morning train up the coast. Most run as a single guided day from the city.
See all 50 Tuscan countryside tours →By place
The city, then the hills around it.
Florence for the galleries and the Duomo. Chianti for the vineyards. Siena and San Gimignano for the medieval skylines. Pisa for the leaning tower. The Cinque Terre for the sea. The countryside for the cypress roads.
By activity
Or pick how you want to spend it.
Walk it with a guide. Taste your way through Chianti. Roll pasta in a kitchen. Climb the dome. Eat across a market, ride out on an e-bike, or take a seat for opera under the frescoes.
Plan it
Three perfect days in Florence.
First time in the city? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without a wasted hour.
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