Florence Sights

  1. Arte dei Giudici e dei Notai

    Dating to the 14th century, with Roman foundations, this building was once home to the judges and lawyers' guild. One of the city's premier restaurants, Alle Murate, is lodged beneath wonderfully restored frescoes. By day you can visit the place as a monument, possibly combining with a light lunch. By night you can dine beneath the ceiling frescoes in romantic style.

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  2. Arte della Lana

    The medieval headquarters of the Wool Guild is made up of a tower-house, echoing that very Florentine preoccupation with self-defence that clearly affected the guilds almost as much as it did feuding families. An eagle clutching a bundle, the guild's symbol, is embossed in stone in several places on the wall on Via Calimaruzza.

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  3. Badia Fiorentina

    This 10th-century abbey has had a few too many renovations over the years but is still worth visiting to see Filippino Lippi's Apparizione della Madonna a San Bernardo (Appearance of the Virgin to St Bernard), to the left as you enter through the small Renaissance cloister. The Romanesque bell tower got a mention from Dante.

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  4. Baptistery

    The Romanesque Baptistery may have been built as early as the 5th century on the site of a Roman temple. It is one of the oldest buildings in Florence. The present facade dates from about the 11th century. It is said that the eighth side represents the (nonexistent) eighth day of the week, which symbolises birth, death and resurrection all in one.

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  5. Basilica di Santa Croce

    Completed in 1385, this Gothic temple is as much the resting place of a Who's Who of Florentine greats as repository of stunning art. The magnificent facade is a neo-Gothic addition of the 19th century! Deceptive, huh? Michelangelo's tomb here was designed by Vasari. Galileo and the composer Rossini also rest in peace here.

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  7. Basilica di Santa Maria del Carmine

    On the southern flank of Piazza del Carmine, this chapel is a treasure trove of paintings by Masolino da Panicale, Masaccio and Filippino Lippi. Above all, the frescoes by Masaccio are considered among his greatest works, representing a definitive break with Gothic art and a plunge into new worlds of expression in the early stages of the Renaissance.

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  8. Basilica di Santa Maria Novella

    This Gothic church, completed by the Dominicans in the 14th century, contains a handful of important works including a seminal fresco by the young Masaccio, which incorporated the emerging values of painting, sculpture and architecture and which is a defining moment in the Renaissance.

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  9. Basilica di Santo Spirito

    A barmy Baroque high altar, added in the 17th century, tends to distract from Brunelleschi's clean and harmonious design, although it's still easy to appreciate the colonnade of pietra serena columns and side chapels, which are filled with Renaissance art, including works by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi.

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  10. Bellosguardo

    A favourite spot for 19th-century landscape painters was the hill of Bellosguardo (Beautiful View), southwest of the city centre. A narrow winding road leads up past a couple of villas from Piazza Tasso to Piazza Bellosguardo. You can't see anything from here, but if you wander along Via Roti Michelozzi into the grounds of the Albergo Torre di Bellosguardo, you'll see what the fuss was about.

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  11. Borgo San Frediano

    Just north of Piazza del Carmine stretches Borgo San Frediano. The street and surrounding area have, to a degree, retained their feel of a working-class quarter where small-scale artisans have beavered away over the centuries. Many continue to do so.

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  13. Campanile

    Soaring gracefully by the side of the Duomo is the 84.7m-high Campanile (Bell Tower). You can admire its beauty from the outside and, if you're feeling fit, head inside and climb its 414 steps for some wonderful views of the Duomo and central Florence. Having designed the bell tower, Giotto began work on it in 1334. His death only three years later cut his contribution cruelly short, and it was left to Andrea Pisano and Francesco Talenti to continue the work.

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  14. Cappelle Medicee

    It seems odd that the Medici chapels, built to balance the Brunelleschi sacristy on the other side of the church, have for organisational purposes been hived off from the church itself. Visitors enter from another point behind the church rather than from inside and thus have difficulty picturing how the chapels fit in with the rest of the complex.

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  15. Casa Buonarroti

    In a house that Michelangelo bought but never lived in, this overpriced museum (more like a memorial) was established by his descendants and features a few pieces by Michelangelo - including the marble relief Madonna della Scala (Madonna of the Steps; 1492), his earliest known work - along with drawings exhibited in rotation, portraits of him by other artists, a few Etruscan urns and an overbearing security guard.

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  16. Casa di Dante

    This is not the house where Dante was born - it was built in the 20th century - but it is (or is near) the location where he lived. The recently renovated museum dedicated to Dante's work, life and times, contains pictures and models of 12th and 13th century Florence, completed by accounts of the interminable squabbles between Guelphs and Ghibellines and Dante's exile from the city.

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  17. Casa Galleria

    An unexpected sight in moody medieval Florence is this Art Nouveau townhouse, built by Giovanni Micheluzzi in 1911 in a rare moment of original 20th-century Florentine architecture. The striking and curvaceous façade is liberally laced with glass and iron - one of the few buildings of its genre in Florence that hasn't been pulled down.

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  19. Casa Guidi

    Welcome to chez Browning. Robert and Elizabeth Barrett rented rooms in 1847 and lived and scribbled here for many years. Elizabeth died here in 1861. The house, run by Eton College and the Landmark Trust, has been restored in 19th-century style and some of the furnishings belonged to the poetic couple. If you like it enough you can stay.

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  20. Casa Rodolfo Siviero

    This shady mansion on the Arno was until 1999 the house of the family of Rodolfo Siviero, an art collector of eclectic taste and, during and after WWII, a key figure in the recovery of art stolen from Florence by the Nazis. The collection is a hodgepodge, ranging from Renaissance church furniture to Roman busts, from Etruscan objects to paintings by Giorgio de Chirico, a personal friend who on the back of one work wrote that the painting was a gift but that Siviero had to pay for the frame!

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  21. Cenacolo di Foligno

    Long forgotten until stumbled upon in the 19th century, this Last Supper scene is thought to have been done by students of the Umbrian Renaissance artist Il Perugino (1445-1523) to his design. The organisation of the scene is classic, with Judas (sans halo) sitting on the wrong side of the table, grasping the sack of coins. Ring the doorbell for entry.

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  22. Cenacolo di San Salvi

    Dominating the refectory wall in what was once a part of the San Salvi monastery is one of Andrea del Sarto's most extraordinary frescoes (1527). In this scene of the Last Supper, the diners gather at an austere table beneath a grand trompe l'oeil vault. Curiously, the tavern owner and an employee are peering at the proceedings from a window above and behind them.

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  23. Cenacolo di Sant'Apollonia

    If you're in the neighbourhood, duck into this former convent for Andrea del Castagno's 15th-century fresco titled Ultima Cena (The Last Supper), found beneath coats of whitewash in the 19th century. He was one of the first artists to dabble with perspective.

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  25. Cenacolo di Santo Spirito

    Home to the Fondazione Romano, a collection of 11th-century Romanesque sculpture, this former refectory provides a change of pace from the Renaissance and has grand frescoes by Andrea Orcagna depicting the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.

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  26. Certosa di Galluzzo

    Dominating the village of Galluzzo, about 3km south along Via Senese from Porta Romana, is this quite remarkable 14th-century monastery. The Carthusian order of monks once had 50 monasteries in Italy. Of these, only two are now inhabited by monks of that order. The Certosa passed into Cistercian hands in 1955.

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  27. Chiesa della Ss Annunziata

    Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, this church was established in 1250 by the founders of the Servite order and rebuilt by Michelozzo and others in the mid-15th century. In the ornate tabernacle, to your left as you enter the church from the atrium, is what is believed by the faithful to be a miraculous painting of the Virgin.

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  28. Chiesa di Ognissanti

    This area was the old stomping ground of Amerigo Vespucci, and the young voyager is said to be pictured next to the Madonna in Ghirlandaio's fresco of the Madonna della Misericordia. Botticelli chips in with a fresco of St Augustine, while Ghirlandaio's masterful Ultima Cena (Last Supper) adorns the wall of the cenacolo (refectory).

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  29. Chiesa di Orsanmichele

    This squat, 14th-century rectangle was originally a grain market but was deemed too good for the purpose and converted into a church. Most of the tabernacles on the exterior walls contain the original statues of the patron saints of Florence's various guilds, sculpted by the best 15th-century sculptors. Inside is a splendid 14th-century coloured-marble altar by Andrea Orcagna.

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