Attractions
- Museum
Accademia Gallery
Florence's second-most visited museum, founded in 1784 as an art school, now famous above all for housing the original of Michelangelo's David since 1873.
- Church
Baptistery of St John
An octagonal Romanesque baptistery facing the Duomo, celebrated for Lorenzo Ghiberti's gilded bronze doors, the "Gates of Paradise", and the mosaics inside its golden dome.
- Garden
Bardini Garden
A terraced hillside garden above the Arno, laid out with a Baroque staircase in the 1600s and later shaped by antiques dealer Stefano Bardini, famed for its wisteria pergola and Duomo views.
- Museum
Bargello Museum
A fortress-turned-prison built from 1255, now Italy's first national sculpture museum, home to two Davids by Donatello and masterworks by Michelangelo, Verrocchio and Cellini.
- Church
Basilica of Santa Croce
Florence's largest Franciscan church, its 19th-century neo-Gothic facade fronting the burial place of Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli, earning it the nickname "Temple of the Italian Glories".
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Basilica of Santa Maria Novella
The Dominican order's principal Florentine church, its green-and-white marble facade a Renaissance landmark designed by Leon Battista Alberti in 1470 for the Rucellai banking family.
- Church
Basilica of Santo Spirito
A Renaissance basilica designed by Filippo Brunelleschi from 1434, its deliberately unadorned facade concealing a serene colonnaded interior and a wooden crucifix carved by the young Michelangelo.
- Garden
Boboli Gardens
Florence's grand formal garden behind Palazzo Pitti, laid out from 1550 for Eleonora di Toledo and expanded over two centuries into one of Italy's most influential Renaissance garden designs.
- Museum
Dante's House Museum
A 1910s reconstruction on the site believed close to Dante Alighieri's family homes, tracing his life, Florentine exile and the writing of the Divine Comedy through a small museum.
- Cathedral
Florence Cathedral
Brunelleschi's red-tiled dome crowns Florence's Gothic cathedral, begun in 1296 and still one of the largest masonry domes ever built, at the heart of the historic centre.
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Giotto's Bell Tower
Florence's freestanding Gothic bell tower, begun by the painter Giotto in 1334 and finished by two later architects, with 414 steps leading to sweeping city views.
- Monument
Loggia dei Lanzi
A 14th-century open-air loggia beside Piazza della Signoria, its wide arches sheltering Renaissance and Roman sculpture, including Cellini's bronze Perseus and Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Women.
- Church
Orsanmichele
A former 14th-century grain market turned church, its exterior niches once held statues of patron saints by Donatello, Ghiberti and Verrocchio, commissioned by Florence's powerful guilds from 1339.
- Historic Palace
Palazzo Pitti
A vast Renaissance palace begun in the 1450s for banker Luca Pitti, bought by the Medici in 1550 and expanded into a sprawling complex of galleries, apartments and the Boboli Gardens behind it.
- Historic Palace
Palazzo Vecchio
Florence's fortress-like town hall since 1299, still the seat of city government today, its Salone dei Cinquecento decorated for Cosimo I de' Medici by Vasari after a commission to Leonardo and Michelangelo fell through.
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Piazza della Signoria
Florence's civic heart since the Middle Ages, an open-air sculpture gallery fronting the crenellated Palazzo Vecchio, where a copy of Michelangelo's David has stood since 1910.
- Square
Piazzale Michelangelo
A 19th-century hilltop terrace across the Arno, purpose-built in 1869 for the single most famous panoramic view of Florence, watched over by a bronze copy of Michelangelo's David.
- Bridge
Ponte Vecchio
Florence's medieval bridge over the Arno, rebuilt in 1345 and lined with jewellers' shops since 1593, and the only city bridge to survive the Second World War intact.
- Church
San Miniato al Monte
One of Tuscany's finest Romanesque churches, its green-and-white marble facade crowning a hill above the city since the 11th century, still run today by resident Olivetan monks.
- Museum
Uffizi Gallery
One of the world's great art museums, built as Medici government offices by Giorgio Vasari from 1560 and home to Botticelli's Birth of Venus and masterpieces spanning centuries.
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