Destination · Italy

Florence

3 articles

Start here

If this is your first time in Florence, begin with these three. The first sets the two days in order; the other two are the ones you cannot improvise, because the Uffizi admits by time slot and the slots sell out, and the climb to Brunelleschi’s dome has a compulsory turn that goes weeks in advance. The rest of the city can be decided on the morning itself, these cannot.

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3 articles

Museums and galleries

At the Uffizi and the Accademia entry is by time slot and the ticket has to be bought before you travel. At the Bargello there is hardly ever a queue, and it is the museum that completes the other two: fifteenth-century Florentine sculpture is there, not at the Accademia, where the David takes all the attention on its own.

6 articles

The works not to miss

Six monographs on six works at the Uffizi, spread across four rooms and three floors. Knowing what to look for before you go in is the only way to look at them calmly, because how long you stay in front of a painting is decided by the crowd and not by you, and because the museum has renumbered its rooms more than once: the current numbers are here.

2 articles

The frescoes where they were made

Two places where painting was not hung but made on the spot, and is looked at in the room it was meant for. At the Brancacci, Masaccio taught a whole century how to make a shadow; at San Marco, Fra Angelico painted one cell at a time, for one man at a time. They are the two poles of the Florentine fifteenth century, and they are fifteen minutes apart on foot.

3 articles

The dome and the churches

Brunelleschi’s dome is the only one of the three that asks for a booking, and it is climbed in timed turns. Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce are visited whenever you like and cost little: the first has Masaccio’s Trinity, the second the tombs and the chapels frescoed by Giotto.

2 articles

Romanesque in white and green

The two buildings Florentines took for Roman for centuries, and which are not: they are Romanesque, eight centuries later. On that misunderstanding Brunelleschi and his generation built their idea of antiquity. One stands in the middle of the busiest square in the city, the other on top of the hill, and admission costs thirty euros for the first and nothing for the second.

3 articles

The Medici city

Three places that tell the same family from three distances: the Medici Chapels are their mausoleum, with Michelangelo’s New Sacristy; Palazzo Pitti is the house they moved into when the city grew too small for them; and the Vasari Corridor is the private passage that joined the two, running over the Ponte Vecchio.

2 articles

Where the governing happened

The palace in which the city governed itself for seven centuries, and which is still the town hall, plus the private passage that let the Medici cross it without coming down to the street. Lined up, they tell the same story from two sides: how you stand in public, and how you avoid having to.

2 articles

The two everybody walks past

Orsanmichele stands on the street every visitor walks between the Duomo and Piazza della Signoria, and almost nobody goes in; Santa Felicita is the first square after the Ponte Vecchio, and anyone heading for Palazzo Pitti walks straight past it. The first holds thirteen original statues of the early Renaissance, the second a Pontormo inside a chapel by Brunelleschi. Neither of them asks for a booking.

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