Two galleries hold the city. Everything else is timing.
Which Uffizi slot leaves you alone with the Botticellis. What the David ticket costs before a guide is added. Whether Siena and San Gimignano fit into one day out of Santa Maria Novella. Reviews of every tour and ticket you can book in Florence.
Four bookings, and the rest of Florence can be improvised.
The tickets and the one long day out that a first visit is built around. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first morningSkip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketTimed entry to the Uffizi. Take the earliest slot on the sheet, before the coach groups reach Piazzale degli Uffizi.
02The twenty minutesTimed Entrance Ticket to Michelangelo’s DavidThe David stands under his own skylight at the end of the Accademia hall. Entry is timed and the queue outside is not.
03The climbBrunelleschi’s Dome Climb Entry Ticket & DuomoUp between the two shells of Brunelleschi's dome and out onto the lantern. Booked separately from the cathedral floor.
04The day outTuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a WinerySiena, San Gimignano and Pisa in one coach day with lunch at a Chianti winery. The trip everyone comes home talking about.
Plain ticket, guided morning, or the pass that covers both.
The Uffizi and the Accademia are the reason most people come, and the only real decision is how much company you want in the room. Three ways in, what each costs to walk through the door, and which building it opens.
Pick a room, a kitchen or a road out of Florence.
The Uffizi and the Accademia hold the art. The Duomo holds the view. Beyond the Porta Romana the day becomes a vineyard, a farmhouse kitchen or a hill town two hours south. Six ways to spend one, and the best of each.
The Florence days more travellers take than any other.
Every review on the site →Timed gallery entries, one very long coach day and a pasta class that has fed half the internet. What earns each of them the slot.
1
Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry Ticket
Visit Florence’s Uffizi Gallery with timed entry, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and an English audio guide, at your own pace.
From · $30
Read our review →
2
Tuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a Winery
from $114
3
Timed Entrance Ticket to Michelangelo’s David
from $26
4
Michelangelo’s David Skip-the-Line Entry Ticket
from $45
5
The Best tour in Florence: Renaissance & Medici Tales – guided by a STORYTELLER
from $3
6
Leonardo Interactive Museum Entry Ticket
from $9
7
The Best Tour in Florence: Renaissance and Medici Tales
from $3
8
Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
from $21
Pasta rolled by hand, a cellar under a castle, steak the size of the plate.
Half of what people remember about Florence happens sitting down. Book the market walk for the morning, the class that ends as lunch, and the tasting that finally explains why Sangiovese tastes of sour cherry.
The cathedral is free. The interesting parts are not.
Everything at the Duomo →
Santa Maria del Fiore admits you to the nave for nothing and charges for everything worth the trip: the climb inside the dome, Giotto's campanile, the baptistery with Ghiberti's doors, and the museum that holds the originals. One pass covers the lot for three days. These three carry more travellers than anything else on the piazza.
463 steps, between the two shells
Brunelleschi built one dome inside another and left a staircase in the gap. You come out at the lantern with the whole city underneath and Vasari's Last Judgement close enough to touch on the way up. Slots sell in half-hour blocks and the early ones go first.
Palazzo Vecchio, ceiling upwards
The Salone dei Cinquecento is the largest room in Florence and every inch of its ceiling is painted. Above it the Arnolfo tower is a separate ticket and a much smaller queue than the cathedral, with the same rooftops from a different angle.
Three days, one piece of paper
The Duomo complex sells a single pass covering the dome, the campanile, the baptistery, the crypt and the museum, valid seventy-two hours from the first entry. If you are staying a weekend it pays for itself on the second monument.
What a day in Florence actually costs.
Every tour and ticket on the site, grouped by price. A gallery morning and a pasta class together still come in under one full day in the hills.
Timed gallery entries, the dome climb, city walks, an audio tour and most cooking classes.
Guided gallery mornings, the Siena and San Gimignano coach day, half-day Chianti cellars, Vespa runs.
Private guides, balloon mornings over the Val d'Orcia, Cinque Terre by car, whole days with a driver.
Florence is ninety minutes from four other centuries.
Siena keeps its shell-shaped square and its striped cathedral. San Gimignano still bristles with tower houses built out of spite. Pisa is a field of white marble beside a railway line. All three are day trips from a bus stop behind the station, and most coaches stop at a Chianti winery on the way back.
Three things Florence has that nowhere else does.
Renaissance galleries and good wine are all over Italy. A staircase inside a dome nobody could explain for four hundred years, a dog paid in cheese, and a perfume bench older than the Uffizi are not.
The dome with a staircase inside it
Nobody in 1418 knew how to roof a hole that wide without centring, so the commission sat open until a goldsmith proposed two domes, one inside the other, laid in a herringbone bond that locked each course as it went up. The stair you climb runs in the cavity between the shells. It gets narrow, it gets warm, and it comes out on the lantern with the city flat underneath.
- 1Duomo Cathedral Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 3.9 · 5,970 reviews
- 2Brunelleschi’s Dome Climb Entry Ticket & Duomo★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,815 reviews
- 3Duomo Guided Tour with Optional Dome Climb Upgrade★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 3,706 reviews
A dog paid in cheese
White truffle grows in the oak woods west of Florence and no machine has ever found one. The dogs work in the cold months, nose down, and are rewarded the second they dig. Hunts run in the hills around San Miniato and end at a table where the morning's find is shaved over something plain enough not to argue with it.
- 1Truffle Hunting Experience with Lunch in San Miniato★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 383 reviews
- 2Florence Food Tour with Truffle Pasta, Steak & Free Flowing Wine★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 278 reviews
- 3Flambé Cheese Wheel Truffle Pasta Class & Tiramisù★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 190 reviews
Benches that never stopped
The far bank kept its guild trades when the centre gave them up. There are still gilders laying leaf on frames, a perfume bench blending the formulas the Santa Maria Novella friars wrote down, and a ceramics kiln at Montelupo that has been firing since the Medici bought from it. Most of them will put you at the bench for an afternoon.
- 1Perfume Masterclass and Sensory Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 463 reviews
- 2Perfume Masterclass in Florence: Make your Own Personal Fragrance★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 253 reviews
- 3Handmade Tuscan Ceramics Masterclass in Montelupo★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 205 reviews
Four Florence bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be decided over breakfast. These four run on entry slots, a cap on the staircase and a calendar that takes no notice of when your train gets in.
- 01Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketEntry is timed and each slot is capped. The quiet early slots are gone weeks out in spring and autumn.
- 02Timed Entrance Ticket to Michelangelo’s DavidThe Accademia is a small building with one very famous room. Without a timed ticket the queue on Via Ricasoli is the visit.
- 03Brunelleschi’s Dome Climb Entry Ticket & DuomoThe staircase between the shells takes a fixed number of people per half hour, and it is the first thing on the Duomo pass to sell out.
- 04Cinque Terre Day Trip with Optional Hiking or PisaIt is a train and a boat away and the day is timetabled end to end. Turn up on spec and you are booking tomorrow instead.
When the stone holds the heat until midnight.
Florence sits in a bowl of hills with no sea breeze in it, and by two in the afternoon the piazzas are unusable. The city has an answer built in: the galleries are cool and timed, the cellars are underground, the classes are indoors, and the hills are five degrees kinder than the centre. Go out early, go under a roof at noon, come back out after seven.
Cross the Ponte Vecchio and the city goes back to work.
The far bank is where Florence still makes things: gilders and frame-carvers in Via Toscanella, a perfume bench that has been blending since the friars ran it, ceramics thrown out at Montelupo. Pitti and the Boboli terraces are up the hill, and the Arno itself takes a kayak.
Every Oltrarno afternoon →
Thirty miles of vineyard with Florence at one end and Siena at the other.
The Chiantigiana runs south through Greve and Panzano between cypress rows and stone farmhouses, and every second gate is a cellar that will pour for you. Half-day tours take two estates and get you back for dinner. Full days add lunch, a hill town and the Brunello country further south around Montalcino.
- 1Pisa, Siena, San Gimignano, and Chianti Experiencefrom $52
- 2Chianti Wineries Tour with Wine Tastingfrom $56
- 3San Gimignano, Siena, Monteriggioni, Chianti Day Trip with Lunch & Wine Tastingfrom $83
By day out — the coach leaves from behind the station
By kind of day — gallery, kitchen, cellar or road
The order that keeps you out of every queue.
Day 1 · morning
Day 2 · eveningThe newest Florence reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Palatina Gallery and Pitti Guided Tour in Florence
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Florence Uffizi Gallery Skip-the-line Tour w Art Historian Guide
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From Firenze | Chianti day tour in a classic car
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Ferrari Parmesan Cheese Balsamic Vinegar wine & food PRIVATE TOUR from FLORENCE
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Authentic Florence Cooking Class at Costanza’s 1839 Family Estate
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Florence Golden Hour Walking tour with Piazzale Michelangelo
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