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Le Cascine
About 15 minutes' walk west along Borgo Ognissanti is Porta al Prato, part of the walls that were knocked down in the late 19th century to make way for the ring of boulevards that still surrounds the city. Through this gate many a Medici bride arrived in Florence in festive parade on her way to the Palazzo Vecchio or Palazzo Pitti. A short walk south from here towards the Arno brings you to the eastern tip of Florence's great green lung, Le Cascine.
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Loggia del Bigallo
This graceful 14th-century marble loggia, opposite the Battistero, was built for the Misericordia charity and served as a lost-and-found office for children; the poor mites who weren't collected within three days were sent on to foster homes. The confraternity has a small museum across the road behind the ambulances.
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Loggia della Signoria
Built by Orcagna in the late 14th century as a platform for public ceremonies, this elegant arcade now serves as an open-air sculpture gallery, with highlights such as Cellini's magnificent bronze Perseo (Perseus). Also known as the Loggia dei Lanzi, the arcade was named after Cosimo I's Swiss mercenaries, the Lances, who were once stationed here.
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Macchine di Leonardo
Pop by here for a squiz at some grand-scale models of some of Leonardo da Vinci's more far-fetched ideas, silly things like flying machines, a bicycle, a glider, a tank and other objects that were, actually, centuries ahead of their time.
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Mercato Centrale
Built in 1874, the city's central produce market seems to disappear amid the confusion of makeshift stands of the clothes and leather market that fill the surrounding square and streets during the day. At night all of this disappears, replaced instead by the contented munching of punters at the various eateries (which vary considerably in quality). The iron-and-glass architecture was something of a novelty in Florence when the market was first built.
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Mercato Nuovo
Built to shelter a market in the 16th century, this handsome loggia was also where medieval Florence's war cart was placed to let locals know trouble was looming. It also contains the Fontana del Porcellino (Piglet's Fountain), Florence's version of the do-this-and-you'll-some-day-return scenario; in this case you must tickle his bum (or rub his nose or something).
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Mondobimbo
Kids are universally welcomed and pampered by Italians. This is a well-stocked playground with everything from bouncy-castles to a minirailway, aimed at kids aged two to 10.
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Museo Archeologico
If you're at all interested in antiquity, you'll love this fabulous museum which was started by Cosimo I in the 15th century and now exhibits outstanding collections of Etruscan, Greek, Roman and ancient Egyptian artefacts ranging from everyday items to classic ceremonial sculpture.
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Museo degli Argenti
More than the silver in the name, this museum in Palazzo Pitti exhibits the massive private wealth of the Medici dynasty - at least, what wasn't sold off by the Lorraines when they took over - and ranges from intricate jewellery to a chalice made from ostrich eggs. The centrepiece is a spectacular collection of antique pietra dura (semiprecious stone) vases.
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Museo dei Ragazzi
Based in Palazzo Vecchio, this museum organises activities and educational workshops for kids here and in the Museo di Storia della Scienza and Museo Stibbert. Budding historians and their parents can hang out with actors dressed up as Cosimo I and Eleonora de Toledo - kids are invited to dress up as their kids (Bia and Garcia) and play with the kinds of toys the two grand-ducal imps used to enjoy.
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Museo del Bigallo
This minuscule museum attached to the Loggia del Bigallo has a few notable artworks, including the 14th-century Madonna della Misericordia fresco (in the Sala dei Capitani), which features the earliest known depiction of the city and the Duomo with its (at the time) incomplete façade.
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Museo dell'Antropologia e Etnologia
Italy's first anthropology and ethnology museum is housed in the Palazzo Nonfinito (Unfinished Palace), which was started by Buontalenti in 1593 in the Mannerist style. It was established in 1869 and exhibits unusual goodies such as Ecuadorian shrunken heads and obscure musical instruments collected by roaming Italians.
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Museo dell'Opera del Duomo
Lurking modestly behind the cathedral is the treasure chest of sculptures that once adorned the Duomo, Baptistery and Campanile. As you enter you see several 3rd-century marble fragments from funerary urns and sarcophagi. Some sculptural groups from the Baptistery follow these, and then various statues (ranging from 1335 to the 1380s) that once adorned the doorways of the Duomo.
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Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce
To be included in your visit to the Basilica di Santa Croce, this austere museum contains several masterpieces salvaged - some only just - from the 1966 flood, including a restored crucifix by Cimabue and Donatello's gilded bronze statue of San Ludovico di Tolosa (St Ludovich of Toulouse), originally placed in a tabernacle on the façade of Orsanmichele.
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Museo della Storia della Fotografia Fratelli Alinari
Florence's Alinari family was one of the earliest in the world to enter the photography business. Their historical archives are an incredibly rich source of material but they have long been kept under lock and key. At the time of going to press, this new museum was still being completed on the site of the one-time Convento delle Leopoldine, behind the façade of the Loggia di San Paolo. It promises to be one of the world's great photography galleries.
Read more about Museo della Storia della Fotografia Fratelli Alinari
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Museo delle Porcellane
Housed in the airy casino at the top of the Giardino di Boboli, this museum contains a varied collection of fine porcelain, including fine pieces from Sèvres, Meissen and Vincennes, collected down the ages by illustrious tenants of Palazzo Pitti.
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Museo di San Marco
In the centre of the university area, this museum is housed in the now-deconsecrated Dominican convent and the Chiesa di San Marco. The church was founded in 1299, rebuilt by Michelozzo in 1437, and again remodelled by Giambologna some years later. It features several paintings, but they pale in comparison with the treasures in the adjoining convent.
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Museo di Santa Maria Novella
Just to the left of the church is the Chiostro Verde (Green Cloister), one of the most beautiful and tranquil spaces in Florence, and so named because Paolo Uccello used a green earth pigment in his frescoes, lending the place an air of otherworldliness. The museum itself has bits and bobs removed from the church.
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Museo di Storia della Scienza
Perfect tonic for the art-jaded tourist, this museum is dedicated to Tuscany's men of science, particularly Galileo Galilei, whose telescope, lens and finger are on display. In his memory, Florence founded an Academy of Experimentation and you can see early thermometers and barometers invented by the group, as well as gadgets and innovations, including a mechanical calculator, from around Europe.
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Museo di Storia Naturale
Four sections of the Natural History Museum are scattered across one of the central university campuses. The ticket office is in the paleontology and geology section, a musty old museum replete with skeletons of ancient beasts, models of same, prehistoric tusks and glass cases laden with fossils. The equally ancient botany (visits by appointment only) and mineralogy sections are in separate buildings a short way down the same drive from the faculty street entrance.
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Museo Horne
This pleasantly low-key museum is made up of 14th- and 15th-century Italian paintings, sculptures, ceramics, coins and other odds and ends left to the nation by British art historian and Florentinophile Herbert Percy Horne. Among the relatively minor art, you'll find the occasional biggie such as Giotto's Santo Stefano (St Stephen), though the museum is perhaps most interesting for its exquisite period furniture.
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Museo Marino Marini
If you have to ask 'who?' then this museum might not be for you. Housed in an ancient church, it contains almost 200 works by one of Italy's best 20th-century sculptors, Marino Marini, whose world, it seems, revolved around man and horse.
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Museo Nazionale del Bargello
Begun in 1254, the Palazzo del Bargello was originally the residence of the chief magistrate and then a police station. During its days as a police complex, many people were tortured in the medieval courtyard and, for a long time, the city's prisons were located here. It now houses the most comprehensive collection of Tuscan Renaissance sculpture in Italy.
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Museo Salvatore Ferragamo
Housed on the 2nd floor of a fortified Renaissance palazzo that takes up an entire block, this small museum displays some 80 years of fashionable footwear produced by the Ferragamo empire, including many shoes that dressed the feet of film stars and princesses. You can pop in on spec but book to be sure.
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Museo Stibbert
Florence's most bizarre museum, housed in a crumbling 14th-century Victorian-decorated palazzo, contains the legacy of Federico Stibbert (1838-1906), fan of military paraphernalia and hoarder extraordinaire. Expect everything from a Botticelli painting and magnificent 16th- to 19th-century armour to quaint, curious and useless junk. There's a nice shady garden to rest and regain your composure.
