Two days in Florence sound like too little and they are not, on one condition: that you decide in advance what to book.
That is the difference between a good visit and two days spent queuing. The historic centre of Florence is tiny, you can cross it on foot in twenty minutes from end to end, and everything you want to see sits inside that rectangle. But the three most sought-after entries, Brunelleschi’s dome, the Uffizi Gallery and the David at the Accademia, run on timed slots and sell out weeks ahead. Anyone who turns up without a ticket does not queue: they stay outside.
The itinerary that follows takes account of that. It splits the two days so the timed entries never clash, keeps you north of the Arno on the first day and in the Oltrarno on the second, and closes each evening at a viewpoint.
Worth saying straight away: Florence is a poor city to rush and a wonderful one to walk, so your shoes matter more than your guidebook.
How Florence is laid out
The historic centre is a rectangle a little over a kilometre on each side, cut in two by the Arno. North of the river are the Duomo, Piazza della Signoria, the Uffizi, the Accademia and the station: this is the monumental half, and the crowded one. South of it, the Oltrarno, are Pitti Palace, the Boboli Gardens, the artisan workshops and the Santo Spirito quarter, where Florentines actually live.
Five bridges connect the two banks in the central stretch, and the most famous is the Ponte Vecchio, which is also the only one left standing after 1944.
You do not need public transport for this itinerary. You only need to keep in mind that the first day stays north and the second crosses south.
Day 1, morning: the Duomo complex
Start at Piazza del Duomo, and start early, because that is the only time you will see the square without a crowd.
The complex is made of five parts visited on a single pass: the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Brunelleschi’s dome, Giotto’s bell tower, the Baptistery of San Giovanni, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo and the archaeological area of Santa Reparata beneath the church floor. Entry to the cathedral is free and needs no pass, but the queue is long, so allow for it.
The dome is what you came for. Filippo Brunelleschi built it between 1420 and 1436 without centring, that is without the wooden framework that until then had supported every vault under construction, inventing a double-shell structure with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern that holds itself up as it rises. It is still the largest masonry vault ever built. You climb 463 steps up a narrow staircase cut between the two shells, and along the way you come out onto the internal galleries: the dome rests on a drum 54 metres above the ground, so the church floor is all that distance below you, while Vasari and Zuccari’s Last Judgement passes an arm’s length away. From the galleries you also see the eight oculi of the drum at close range, with stained glass designed by Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Castagno and Paolo Uccello.
The cathedral facade you see is nineteenth-century, but the original design is by Arnolfo di Cambio, who began the site in 1296. His original statues are in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, and I have written about his work in the article on Arnolfo di Cambio.
Please note: the mosaics on the Baptistery vault are currently under restoration and cannot be seen. If the Baptistery was the main reason for your visit, factor that into your choice of pass.
I have put the comparison between the three passes, the climb step by step and the Museo dell’Opera in the article on the Florence Duomo and Brunelleschi’s dome.
Day 1, afternoon: Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi
From Piazza del Duomo, five minutes on foot along via dei Calzaiuoli, you reach Piazza della Signoria.
It is a square that works as an open-air museum and asks no admission. Under the Loggia dei Lanzi stand Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus, holding up Medusa’s head, and Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women, carved from a single block of marble. In front of Palazzo Vecchio is the copy of Michelangelo’s David, which occupies the spot where the original stood from 1504 to 1873. A round plaque set in the paving, in front of the Neptune fountain, marks the point where Girolamo Savonarola was hanged and burned in 1498.
In the afternoon you go into the Uffizi, and this is where the booking matters. The museum displays around two thousand works and takes a good three hours if you want to see it all, two if you follow a list: I have written about the ten works to see at the Uffizi and which rooms they are in today, after the renumbering.
If you arrive after 4 p.m. the ticket costs almost half, and in the last two hours the rooms empty out considerably.
Day 1, evening: the Ponte Vecchio
As you come out of the Uffizi, the Ponte Vecchio is two hundred metres away.
The bridge has existed in this form since 1345 and the shops on it have always been there, but they have not always been jewellers: until 1593 they were butchers and tanners, who dumped their waste straight into the Arno. It was Ferdinando I de’ Medici who threw them out and replaced them with goldsmiths, for a reason that had nothing to do with urban decorum: above the shops runs the Vasari Corridor, the elevated passage almost a kilometre long that Vasari built in 1565 to connect Palazzo Vecchio to Pitti Palace, and the Grand Duke did not want to smell meat while walking over it.
In 1944 the retreating German army blew up every bridge in Florence. The Ponte Vecchio was the only one spared, and to block it they mined the medieval buildings at either end instead: the houses you see at the two approaches are post-war reconstructions.
The corridor can be walked today, and I have written about it in the article on the Ponte Vecchio and the Vasari Corridor.
Sunset is best watched from Ponte Santa Trinita, the next bridge west, which is the point from which the Ponte Vecchio is seen in profile with the Arno reflecting the shops.
Day 2, morning: the Accademia and the David
The second day starts with the other entry to book: the Accademia Gallery, on via Ricasoli, ten minutes on foot from the Duomo.
You come here for one statue, and that is fine. Michelangelo’s David is 5.17 metres tall, carved between 1501 and 1504 from a block of Carrara marble that two sculptors had already roughed out and abandoned forty years earlier, judging it ruined. Michelangelo was twenty-six.
What surprises you in person is the disproportion: the head and hands are too large for the body. It is not a mistake, it is an optical correction, because the David was meant to stand on a buttress of the cathedral, tens of metres up. It was later placed in Piazza della Signoria and moved to the Accademia only in 1873, to protect it.
Before you reach the David’s tribune you walk a corridor with the Prisoners, four figures Michelangelo left unfinished, their bodies half emerging from the raw marble. Many people hurry past them to reach the statue at the end and miss the most interesting part: in those barely blocked-out shapes you see how he worked. I have written a whole article on the Accademia Gallery and the David, and the rest of his life is in the biography of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Day 2, afternoon: the Oltrarno, Pitti Palace and Boboli
In the afternoon you cross the Arno.
Pitti Palace was built by the banker Luca Pitti in the mid-fifteenth century and bought a century later by Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici, who turned it into the family’s royal residence. It holds five museums, and the one that matters most is the Palatine Gallery, where the paintings hang in several rows up to the ceiling, as in seventeenth-century collections rather than in a modern museum. There are eleven Raphaels, fifteen Titians and the works of Jacopo Pontormo, who left his best work in Florence.
Please note: the Room of the Iliad and the Treasury of the Grand Dukes are temporarily closed, so part of the route cannot be visited.
Behind the palace opens the Boboli Garden, forty-five hectares of Italian formal garden designed by Tribolo from 1550 onwards. It has a separate ticket from the palace. The part worth the climb is the Viottolone, the cypress avenue that runs down towards the Isolotto basin, and the Buontalenti Grotto at the entrance, where fake stalactites enclose copies of Michelangelo’s Prisoners.
The five museums of the palace, the Palatine Gallery room by room and the four things to look for in the park are in the article on Pitti Palace and the Boboli Garden.
If you have an hour left, the Santo Spirito quarter is ten minutes away: the basilica has the plainest facade in Florence and the most harmonious interior, and it is Brunelleschi’s last project.
Day 2, evening: Piazzale Michelangelo
You close by climbing to Piazzale Michelangelo, on the hill south-east of the centre.
You get there on foot in twenty-five minutes from the Ponte Vecchio, up the ramps and stairways that start at Piazza Poggi, or on bus 12 or 13. The terrace was built in 1869 by the architect Giuseppe Poggi, in the years when Florence was capital of the Kingdom of Italy, precisely as a belvedere.
From up there you see the whole city at once, and you understand something that escapes you down in the streets: Brunelleschi’s dome is not tall in absolute terms, but it is enormous compared with everything else. No building comes near it, and that is no accident, because for centuries it was forbidden in Florence to build any higher.
If you still have the legs, the basilica of San Miniato al Monte is fifty metres further up. It is eleventh-century, it has a white and green marble facade that is the model for all Florentine Romanesque, and in the late afternoon the monks sing vespers in Gregorian chant.
If you have time to spare
Three places that do not fit into two full days but are worth it if you have a few extra hours.
The basilica of Santa Croce is Italy’s pantheon: it holds the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and Rossini, plus Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel and the fresco cycles by Giotto in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels.
The Bargello National Museum holds the Florentine sculpture the Uffizi lacks: Donatello’s bronze David, the two panels from the 1401 competition between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, the marbles of the young Michelangelo. It is inexpensive and never has a queue.
The Brancacci Chapel, in the Carmine church in the Oltrarno, holds Masaccio’s frescoes, which introduced perspective into mural painting in 1425. Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael all came here to study. Admission is limited to small groups and must be booked.
Practical information
Data checked on 28 August 2026 on the official websites. Prices and opening times change often: check again on duomo.firenze.it for the Duomo complex, on uffizi.it for the Uffizi, Pitti Palace and Boboli, and on galleriaaccademiafirenze.it for the Accademia.
Duomo tickets. The complex is visited with one of three passes. The Brunelleschi Pass costs 30 euros and covers the dome, bell tower, Baptistery, Museo dell’Opera and Santa Reparata. The Giotto Pass costs 20 euros and covers the same things except the dome. The Ghiberti Pass costs 15 euros and covers the museum, Baptistery and Santa Reparata. The reduced rate for children aged 7 to 14 costs 12, 7 and 5 euros respectively, and under-7s go free. Entry to the cathedral is always free.
Booking the dome. The dome climb requires a compulsory time slot, chosen at the moment of purchase, which cannot be changed or cancelled. Slots sell out weeks ahead in high season, so it is the first thing to buy.
Duomo opening times. The dome opens at 8.15, with the last slot at 18.45 on weekdays, at 16.30 on Saturdays and at 16.30 on Sundays and public holidays, when access begins at 12.45. The bell tower opens daily 8.15-18.45, the Baptistery 8.30-19.30 and the Museo dell’Opera 8.30-19.00, closed on the first Tuesday of every month.
Uffizi tickets and opening times. The full ticket costs 25 euros at the desk and 29 euros booked online, because the booking fee is added to the price. After 4 p.m. there is an afternoon rate of 16 euros. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday 8.15-18.30, with last admission at 17.30, and is closed on Mondays.
Pitti Palace and Boboli tickets. Pitti Palace costs 16 euros on the day and 19 euros booked. The Boboli Garden has its own ticket, 10 euros on the day and 13 booked.
Accademia tickets and opening times. Since 1 February 2026 the full ticket costs 20 euros, plus 4 euros booking fee. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday from 8.15 to 18.50, with last admission half an hour before closing, and is closed on Mondays. There is a combined ticket with the Bargello National Museum at 26 euros, valid for 48 hours.
Free entry. In the state museums, that is the Uffizi, Pitti, Boboli and the Accademia, admission is free for under-18s and on the first Sunday of every month. On free Sundays there is no booking and the queue is long, so it is worth arriving at opening time.
Getting there. Santa Maria Novella station is inside the historic centre and the Duomo is ten minutes away on foot. Florence Peretola airport is four kilometres out and connected by the T2 tram, which reaches the station in twenty minutes. The centre is a restricted traffic zone almost everywhere, so arriving by car complicates the day rather than simplifying it.
If you would rather sort out the main ticket before you leave, you can book entry to the Florence Duomo complex and pick a dome slot while they last.
Where to go from here
If these two days were enough to convince you that Florence deserved more, the next step is the museum: the list of ten works to see at the Uffizi tells you exactly what to look for and where.
If instead you have a few days in Tuscany, the three cities that complete the picture are Siena, which tells the other half of the story of Tuscan art, Pisa with its Piazza dei Miracoli and Pistoia, which almost nobody visits and which holds a masterpiece like Giovanni Pisano’s pulpit.
Photo credits. View from Piazzale Michelangelo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0. Dome and bell tower: Nan Palmero, CC BY 2.0. Ponte Vecchio: Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 3.0. Boboli Garden: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0. Basilica of Santa Croce: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0. Piazza della Signoria: Jebulon, CC0. All images come from Wikimedia Commons.
