Other sights in Florence
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Galleria degli Uffizi
Reason enough to come to Florence, this fabled museum contains quite simply the world’s finest collection of Renaissance art, including both 12th- to 14th-century forebears and 16th- and 17th-century inheritors. Its 50-plus rooms are crammed with more than 1500 works, nearly all of them masterpieces. Part of the museum’s mystique is the difficulties it presents: long lines, crowded galleries, a daunting combination of quantity and quality. There are two tricks to enjoying your experience: pre-book tickets and concentrate on select artists or periods. While signage is less than satisfying, the museum is laid out chronologically, and largely over a single floor. For a menta…
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Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana
Hidden at the end of the cloister just to the left of San Lorenzo’s main entrance, this library was founded by Medici pope Clement VII in the 1520s for the safe-keeping of his family’s invaluable collection of books and manuscripts. Architectural historians go gaga over the mannerist-style vestibule and reading room designed by Michelangelo. He borrowed materials and motifs from Brunelleschi’s adjacent church, yet breaks rule after architectural rule. For example, he uses structural elements that serve no structural purpose and crowding decorative elements so that they are crowded to overlapping. The effect is a kind of sublime unease, almost claustrophobia.
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Chiesa di Orsanmichele
This oddly jewel-like building started out as a grain market that was walled in during the 14th century to create a church, though the upper floors remained a working granary. With its lace-like stone window frames and gold and lapis lazuli tabernacle, it’s a masterpiece of Italian Gothic. Outdoor niches are populated with masterworks of early Renaissance sculpture by Donatello, Ghiberti and company. Most are copies, but you can see the originals – plus stunning city views – by visiting the upper floors, which are now open to the public for the first time in decades (10am-5pm Mon only, admission free).
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Battistero
The 11th-century Baptistery is one of Florence’s oldest buildings – and most extraordinary. The three doorways into the octangular, Romanesque structure tell the story of humanity’s redemption, including a revolutionary pair by sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti that, in the early 1400s, helped usher in a new age that would become known as the Renaissance (the originals are in Museo dell’Opera del Duomo). The womb-like interior dazzles with its opulent, Byzantine-style mosaics, including a gruesome image of Satan devouring sinners, which is said to have inspired Dante’s Inferno.
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Chiesa d’Ognissanti
It’s hard to believe now, but this church and monastery, which dates to 1256, helped to jumpstart the economy of the nascent city. It was founded by Benedictine monks who brought advanced weaving techniques with them from Lombardy, and Florence went on to make its first fortune in textiles. Today’s church is a largely 17th-century affair – and a rare example of baroque architecture. Inside the church are works by Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, though the real prize is Ghirlandaio’s monumental Last Supper. Painted in 1480, it hides within the cloisters to the left of the main entrance.
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Giardino di Bardini
This small and well manicured garden is steeply pitched, and spills down the hillside almost to the Arno. Views across the Florentine rooftops are some of the city’s loveliest, made all the more so for the gardens’ grottoes, fountains, classical statuary and monumental baroque staircase. A springtime stroll is especially rewarding when by turns azaleas, peonies, wisteria and irises come into bloom. Escape sun, rain or heat under the loggia (covered area on the side of a building), which also doubles as a cafe.
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Giardino Torrigiani
Passers-by have no idea, but behind the unassuming facades of Via Serragli lies a vast, secret garden – Europe’s largest privately owned green space within an historic centre. The Torrigiani family has restored the leafy retreat, and Vanni, son of the current marquis, conducts tours of the grounds personally. Designed at the height of the Romantic movement in the early 19th century, the sprawling complex includes rare tree species, Medici battlements, wide English-style lawns and complex Masonic symbology.
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Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia
Sheltered incongruously beneath an early Renaissance loggia (covered area on the side of a building), this compact, modern museum is the best and brightest addition to the city’s art scene in years. It mounts excellent temporary exhibitions, while permanent displays tell the story of Italian and world photography from its invention. The bookshop offers on-demand printing of photos, including many historical photos of Florence, from the renowned Alinari archives.
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Galleria Palatina
Raphaels and Rubens vie for centre stage in the enviable collection of 16th- to 18th-century art amassed by the Medici and Lorraine dukes in the 1st-floor Galleria Palatina, reached via staircase from Palazzo Pitti’s central courtyard. This gallery has retained the original display arrangement of paintings (squeezed in, often on top of each other) so can be visually overwhelming – go slow and focus on the works one by one.
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Museo Ferragamo
Located in the basement of Palazzo Spini Feroni - a fine medieval palace that also houses Ferragamo’s flagship store, this quirky museum is mandatory for shoe fetishists – others may find the admission price exorbitant for what you get. Besides some of the Florentine designer’s most lavish creations, you can see pumps made to order for the likes of Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe.
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Museo di Palazzo Davanzati
The scale and luxury of this 14th-century palazzo are a reminder of the medieval wealth that helped fund the coming Renaissance, from its monumental courtyard to the leaded glass that covers its rooftop kitchen. Around the courtyard, the maze of rooms contains a collection of period furnishing and utensils. There are free guided tours at 10am, 11am and noon most days.
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Great Synagogue of Florence
Built in the 1870s just after the Jewish community in Italy had gained full emancipation after centuries of persecution, this vast synagogue is a beautiful, polychrome hodgepodge of Islamic, Jewish and Christian religious architecture that recalls the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. A small museum documents the history of Jewish Florence.
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Appartamenti Reali
Past the Sala di Venere is the Appartamenti Reali, a series of rooms presented as they were c 1880–91, when they were occupied by members of the House of Savoy. The style and division of tasks assigned to each room is reminiscent of Spanish royal palaces, all heavily bedecked with drapes, silk and chandeliers.
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Palazzo Rucellai
Designed by Leon Battista Alberti in the 1440s for one of Florence’s richest families, this palazzo is arguably the first Renaissance building to rigorously mimic Roman forebearers – in this case, the Colosseum, with its Doric, Ionic and Corinthian pilasters. Note that the interior is not open to visitors.
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Basilica di Santa Trinità
An architectural mishmash that includes a mannerist facade, Romanesque crypt and severe Gothic nave, this often-overlooked church contains Ghirlandaio’s Technicolor fresco cycle devoted to St Francis, complete with panoramas of Renaissance Florence.
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Museo Stefano Bardini
Nineteenth-century antiquarian and art restorer Stefano Bardini amassed a small fortune and his own expansive collection of Renaissance art, on display in this rambling and recently restored monastery-turned-palazzo that was once his home.
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Porta San Niccolò
Built in the 1320s, the best preserved of the city’s medieval gates still stands sentinel on the banks of the Arno. Behind it, a monumental staircase designed by Giuseppe Poggi winds its way up towards Chiesa di San Miniato al Monte.
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Torre Pagliazza
Regarded as the oldest building in Florence, this often-overlooked round stone tower probably dates to the 7th century and is of Byzantine origin. Today it has been incorporated into a hotel.
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Grotta del Buontalenti
Watch a fleshy Venere (Venus) by Giambologna rise from the waves in the Grotta del Buontalenti.
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Palazzo degli Uffizi
The Palazzo degli Uffizi, designed and built by Vasari in the second half of the 16th century at the request of Cosimo I, originally housed the city’s administrators, judiciary and guilds (uffizi means offices).
Cosimo’s successor, Francesco I, commissioned the architect Buontalenti to modify the upper floor of the palazzo to house the Medici’s growing art collection. Thus, indirectly, the first steps were taken to turn it into an art gallery.
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Palazzo Medici-Riccardi
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Museo di San Marco
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Museo dello Spedale degli Innocenti
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Museo Bardini
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Chiesa della SS Annunziata
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