Art in Florence: The Must-See Masterpieces

Perhaps no city in the world is as associated with art and architecture as Florence. Something special coalesced here in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when the city’s painters, sculptors and architects took inspiration from one another – sometimes as collaborators, sometimes as fierce rivals – to produce churches, palaces and squares filled with sculptures, paintings and gloriously frescoed walls.

Centuries later, reams of great artworks remain in this Tuscan city – indeed, it’s so stuffed with art at numerous museums and even more churches that it can feel overwhelming for most visitors. To catch the major highlights, plan ahead to visit our list of Florence’s can’t-miss artistic masterpieces.

1. Brunelleschi’s dome

Where: Duomo

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The fiery red-brick dome of Florence’s Duomo (cathedral) is the most spectacular structure in the city – and one of the most iconic works of architecture ever erected. Admire it from Piazzale Michelangelo to completely swoon – then climb up into its guts to understand why Filippo Brunelleschi’s iconic cupola (1420–36) deserves all the hoopla.

Brunelleschi rested the inner and outer concentric domes on the drum of the cathedral, allowing artisans to lay four million bricks from the ground up on a wooden support frame. The final leg of the climb – up a somewhat hazardous flight of stairs scaling the curve of the inner dome – rewards with an unforgettable 360-degree panorama of the city.

2. Botticelli’s paintings

Where: Galleria degli Uffizi

Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli (c 1445–1510) charmed the socks off the ruling Medici family, who commissioned several works by the Renaissance master – and many of them are on display at the unmissable Galleria degli Uffizi. Buy tickets for the museum in advance online and arrive early or late to get the best (crowd-free) view of his Primavera (c 1478) and Birth of Venus (c 1484) in rooms 10–14. Observe the pastel, fresco-like appearance of Venus – painted with a mixture of yolk and light tempera – and compare the watery palette to Primavera’s dark, strong colors.

3. Michelangelo’s David

The world’s most famous statue was commissioned in 1501 to stand high up in the apse of Florence’s Duomo (the big head and hands would have appeared perfectly proportioned from below). Instead, the biblical warrior ended up in front of Palazzo Vecchio until 1873, when he became the Galleria dell’Accademia’s megastar. Snag advance tickets online to cut waiting time; once inside the gallery, be sure to contemplate Michelangelo’s iconic masterpiece from all angles. From the left, David’s facial expression is Zen and boy-like; from the right, it is cold and charged, ready and determined to slay the mighty giant Goliath.

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4. Michelangelo’s Medici Chapels sculptures

Where: Basilica di San Lorenzo

You’ll see David on everything from souvenir boxer shorts to kitchen aprons at Florence’s tackier shops – but the unsung stars of Florence’s sensational Michelangelo collection are the funerary sculptures hidden in the depths of the ostentatious Cappelle Medicee(Medici Chapels), part of the Basilica di San Lorenzo complex. Visit in the morning and allow time to linger over hauntingly beautiful Dawn and Dusk (1526–31) on the sarcophagus of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Night and Day on the sarcophagus of his son, Giuliano. Notice the mask, owl and poppies entwined within female Night, and observe the musculature of her body, which follows that of the male models Michelangelo always used.

5. Fra Angelico’s frescoes

Where: Museo di San Marco

Artists are often more likely to be sinners than saints. Not Fra Angelico (c 1395–1455), a Tuscan friar and gifted painter who was beatified (one step short of being officially canonized) by the pope in 1982. Fra Angelico’s deeply devotional frescoes mirrored Renaissance humanism – and the wonderfully uncrowded Museo di San Marco is the place to view his work. In 1440 and 1441, Fra Angelico decorated the monastic cells of 44 fellow friars with frescoes – some spiritual, some meditative, some downright frightening. (Look out for Jesus squashing a nasty-looking devil in Archbishop St Antonino’s cell.) At the top of the stairs, his most famous work, the haunting Annunciation (c 1440), commands all eyes.

6. Lorenzo Monaco’s frescoes

Where: Basilica di Santa Trinita

Frescoes were more than mere passive religious pictures in medieval Florence, for imagery seen on walls in the city’s churches staked out points of view on major theological issues of the day. Case in point: the evocative wall paintings decorating the side chapels in Basilica di Santa Trinita. Those by the Sienese painter Lorenzo Monaco in the Cappella Bartolini Salimbeni evoke the heated debate over the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception – depicting her early life in a way that suggested she was born without original sin (an issue not resolved by the Roman Catholic Church until 1854). Art lovers will appreciate that the beautiful paintings, dating from 1420, are one of the few remaining examples of International Gothic frescoes in all of Italy.

7. Cappella Brancacci

Where: Basilica di Santa Maria del Carmine

Fire in the 18th century all but destroyed the 13th-century Basilica di Santa Maria del Carmine – but spared the masterpiece frescoes in its Cappella Brancacci. The vivid cycle illustrates the life of St Peter (the guy in the orange gown). It was begun by Masolino da Panicale and his pupil Masaccio in 1428, then finished by Filippino Lippi in the 1480s – and their collective work pushed the art of painting in bold new directions. Human beings, including beggars and the sick, dominate the scene, plunging viewers into the shock of early Renaissance naturalism.

Chapel visits are by guided tour (capped at 20 minutes, to protect the artwork); only 30 people are allowed in at a time. Reserve tickets in advance in high season.

8. Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise

Where: Museo dell'Opera del Duomo

One of Italy’s greatest early Renaissance artworks is (really) a pair of doors on display at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. Crafted in the 15th century for the eastern entrance to the cathedral’s baptistery, the Gates of Paradise (1425–52) underwent an extremely thorough restoration (it took two decades) at the end of the 20th century. Today, the 16m-tall, bronze-gilded doors shimmer as their goldsmith creator, Lorenzo Ghiberti (c 1378–1455), intended. Study the story of Adam and Eve cast in bronze on 10 square panels on the doors – and understand why it took Ghiberti 27 years to complete this exquisite masterpiece.

9. Piero della Francesca’s Duke and Duchess of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza

Where: Galleria degli Uffizi

The warts-and-all paintings of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino by Tuscan painter Piero della Francesca (c 1420–92) are an Uffizi highlight. The wonderfully true-to-life portraits glow with the mastery of light and skilled synthesis of form and color, which made this Renaissance pioneer from eastern Tuscany so famous. The crooked-nosed duke is portrayed from the left side because his right eye was lost in a joust. Facing him, the duchess is deathly white, indicating the portrait is posthumous. Surprised by their diminutive size? The double-sided portraits originally slotted into a portable, hinged frame that folded like a book.