Florence

Florence: The Problem With Coming for One Week Is You Leave Feeling Robbed

Florence has a density of serious art that few cities in the world match, and fewer still concentrate so compactly. The Uffizi, the Accademia, the Bargello, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the Brancacci Chapel – all within walking distance of each other, all holding work of genuine consequence. The risk is arriving with a list and moving too fast. Three days done carefully beats a week done at sprint pace.

The Uffizi in 2026

The Uffizi changed ticketing in late 2025 when a new booking agency (CoopCulture) took over; the official site is now tickets.uffizi.it. Adult entry for a standard daytime slot is €25 walk-up or €29 booked in advance, plus a €4 booking fee. The new afternoon discount is genuinely useful: entry from 4pm onwards costs €16 on-site or €20 online, and the galleries are meaningfully quieter after the tour groups have cycled through. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 8:15am to 6:30pm, last entry 5:30pm, and closed Mondays.

The permanent collection runs roughly chronologically from Cimabue through Caravaggio and Titian. The Botticelli rooms – Primavera and Birth of Venus sitting in the same gallery – are approximately halfway through the circuit. Allow at least three hours. Without a booking in summer, the queue is measured in hours.

The Duomo Complex

The combined Duomo ticket covers the cathedral, Brunelleschi’s dome, the Campanile, the Baptistery, and the Museo dell’Opera for around €30, bookable online. The dome climb is 463 steps with no elevator, and it passes through the narrow gap between the inner dome and the outer shell, letting you look straight up at Giorgio Vasari’s Last Judgement fresco before emerging into daylight. The Museo dell’Opera holds the original Gates of Paradise panels by Ghiberti and Michelangelo’s unfinished Bandini Pieta – the one he attacked with a hammer out of frustration and then had a student patch up. He intended it for his own tomb. The repairs are visible if you know where to look.

The Accademia

Michelangelo’s David is the reason most people come, and it earns the attention. Adult entry €16; booking ahead is worthwhile. The statue is 5.17 metres tall and the carving quality is most apparent from floor level looking up at the hands and face. The four unfinished Prisoners flanking the corridor on the way in are, for many people, more interesting than the David: they show Michelangelo’s working method, bodies emerging from blocks, unresolved.

Where to Eat

The centro storico around the Duomo is tourist-priced. The Oltrarno neighbourhood south of the Arno has independent restaurants with local clientele and prices that reflect it. Trattoria Camillo on Borgo San Jacopo does traditional Tuscan food at around €25-35 per person including wine. The ground floor of the Mercato Centrale on Via dell’Ariento – not the tourist food hall upstairs – has excellent cheese, cured meat, and fresh pasta. Nerbone inside the market is the most established source of lampredotto, the tripe sandwich that is Florence’s real street food.

Getting Around

Florence is walkable. The main sites sit within a 20-minute walk of each other. Piazzale Michelangelo on the south hill, essential at sunset, is a 30-minute uphill walk from Ponte Vecchio or a short taxi ride.

Santa Maria Novella station is the main rail terminus. Direct trains from Rome take 1.5 hours (Frecciarossa); from Milan about 1h45m. Day trips to Siena (1.5 hours by bus from Piazza Gramsci) and Pisa (1 hour by train) are both straightforward and both worth doing if you have time.

Practical Notes

High season from June through August is hot and very crowded. April through May and September through October are the windows that actually feel like a pleasure. The city imposes a tourist tax of €3-5 per person per night on accommodation. Churches require covered shoulders and knees. Santa Croce, where Dante, Galileo, and Machiavelli are buried, now charges €10 entry.