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Florence

Florence is a small city with a very large past and an evening life hidden one bridge away.

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Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg / CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Florence

Florence is smaller than people expect — you can walk across the historic centre in twenty minutes — and for three months of the year it holds more visitors than residents. That combination produces the city's one real trap: it is entirely possible to spend four days here queueing, eating badly and never meeting anyone who lives in it. The remedy is geography. Cross the Arno to the Oltrarno, or walk ten minutes north to Sant'Ambrogio, and Florence becomes a working Tuscan city again, full of workshops where people still gild frames and bind books by hand, wine bars the size of a living room, and squares where the whole neighbourhood eats outside in summer. The Renaissance is genuinely here, in a density that no other city matches — Michelangelo, Botticelli, Brunelleschi, all within a few streets — but the reason to stay a week rather than two days is the ordinary life that continues underneath it, and a student population of fifty thousand that keeps the evenings young.

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The Duomo and Brunelleschi's dome

The cathedral is free to enter and usually has a long queue; the dome, the bell tower, the baptistery and the crypt each need the combined ticket, booked for a timed slot. Climbing the dome means four hundred and sixty-three steps up a spiral between the inner and outer shells — Brunelleschi built it without scaffolding, and you see how from inside. Book the first slot of the day. Giotto's bell tower next door has almost the same view, includes the dome itself in it, and is far easier to get a place on.

The Uffizi

One of the great collections in the world, in the old administrative offices of the Medici: Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera in one room, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Titian, and a corridor of windows over the Arno. Book online for a timed entry — walk-up queues run to hours in season. The practical advice is to go in the last two hours before closing, take one floor rather than both, and accept that you will not see it all. The café terrace on the roof is open to ticket holders and almost always empty.

The Oltrarno

Across the river, the quarter of San Frediano and Santo Spirito is where Florence keeps its artisans and its evenings. Workshops still do gilding, leather, marbled paper and furniture restoration, with doors open onto the street. Piazza Santo Spirito, with its deliberately unfinished church front, holds a morning market and turns into the city's best outdoor drinking space after dark, with students sitting on the church steps. It is five minutes from the Ponte Vecchio and it belongs to an entirely different city.

The Accademia and the David

Michelangelo's David stands at the end of a purpose-built tribune, seventeen feet of marble carved when he was twenty-six, and it is one of the few famous objects that is better in person than in reproduction — the hands are deliberately too large, the expression changes as you walk around it. The rest of the museum is modest, so an hour is enough. Book a timed slot. The unfinished Prisoners in the corridor leading to it, figures half-emerging from rough blocks, are worth as much attention as the David itself.

Sant'Ambrogio and San Niccolò

Ten minutes east of the Duomo and almost visitor-free. Sant'Ambrogio has the food market Florentines actually shop in, with a cheap lunch counter inside that has been feeding stallholders for decades, and a square that fills with local families in the evening. Below it, San Niccolò sits against the old city wall with a handful of bars and the steps up to Piazzale Michelangelo behind. This is the part of the centre where you will hear Italian at the next table rather than English.

Piazzale Michelangelo and San Miniato

The postcard view of Florence, from a terrace above the south bank: the dome, the tower, the river and the hills behind. It is busy at sunset and worth it anyway. Keep climbing another ten minutes to San Miniato al Monte, an eleventh-century church in green and white marble that is one of the most beautiful buildings in Tuscany, where Benedictine monks sing vespers in Gregorian chant most evenings. The walk up through the rose garden from San Niccolò takes twenty minutes.

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Aperitivo in Santo Spirito

From about seven, the square in front of the church fills with people holding a spritz, sitting on the steps, at the bars around the edge or simply on the paving. It is the most democratic social space in Florence: students, artisans, families and whoever has just arrived, all in one place, all outside. Drinks run six to nine euros and usually arrive with something to eat. Nothing about it requires a reservation or a plan, which is exactly why it is the easiest place in the city to fall into conversation.

Wine windows and neighbourhood enoteche

Florence has around a hundred and fifty buchette del vino — small arched hatches in palace walls, cut in the sixteenth century so wine could be sold directly from cellars — and a number of them are serving again, handing a glass through a hole in the wall to whoever knocks. Beyond the novelty, the city's small enoteche are the real institution: a counter, a dozen Tuscan wines by the glass, crostini, and standing room. Le Volpi e l'Uva and Il Santino are the classics, both south of the river.

Student nightlife around Santa Croce

Fifty thousand students, many of them on exchange programmes, keep a genuine late-night scene going in a city that would otherwise close at eleven. The streets around Santa Croce and Via de' Benci hold the densest run of bars, and it is loud, young, international and cheap by Florentine standards. It is also where you will meet other travellers most easily. For something more local, cross to San Frediano, where the bars are smaller and the crowd lives here.

Opera, and music in churches

Opera was invented in Florence, and the city takes its music seriously: the Maggio Musicale is one of Italy's oldest festivals, and the Teatro del Maggio has a modern hall with reasonably priced upper seats. More affordable and more atmospheric are the concerts held in churches almost every evening — chamber music in Santo Stefano al Ponte, organ recitals in the Duomo, Gregorian vespers at San Miniato at sunset, which is free. Programmes are posted on the church doors.

Calcio Storico, if you happen to be here in June

A sixteenth-century game played in sand in Piazza Santa Croce between the four historic quarters of the city, in period costume, with rules that permit punching, wrestling and headbutting. Four matches in June, the final on the twenty-fourth, the feast of San Giovanni, followed by fireworks over the Arno. Tickets are scarce and the atmosphere is intense and entirely local. If your dates coincide, rearrange them around it; the rest of the June festivities are free and fill the streets.

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Walk the Oltrarno workshops

Between Via Maggio, Via Santo Spirito and Borgo San Frediano there are still dozens of working artisan studios — gilders, bookbinders, shoemakers, restorers — with open doors and no obligation to buy. Most makers are happy to be watched and to explain what they are doing if you ask in the afternoon rather than at closing. It costs nothing, takes an hour or two, and is the only part of Renaissance Florence that is still being practised rather than displayed.

Eat standing up at a tripe cart

The lampredotto sandwich — the cow's fourth stomach, slow-cooked, chopped into a bread roll with salsa verde and the top of the bun dipped in the broth — is the street food Florence has eaten for five hundred years, and it costs around five euros from a cart. The stands at Sant'Ambrogio, the Mercato Centrale and Piazza dei Cimatori are the ones locals use. Order it con salsa verde e piccante, eat it standing, and you have had the most Florentine lunch available.

Climb to San Miniato for sunset vespers

Walk up through the rose garden from Piazza Poggi to Piazzale Michelangelo, then ten minutes further to San Miniato al Monte. The view from the church steps is better than the one from the crowded terrace below, and at about half past five in winter or half past six in summer the monks sing vespers in the crypt in Gregorian chant. It is free, it lasts half an hour, and almost nobody who came for the view knows it is happening.

Take the bus into Chianti or the train to Siena

Florence is surrounded by the countryside that made it rich. The SITA bus to Greve in Chianti takes an hour through vineyards; the train to Siena takes ninety minutes and drops you in a medieval city with a shell-shaped square. Lucca, flat and walled and best seen by bicycle on top of the walls, is eighty minutes away. Any of the three works as a day out, and all of them cost less than ten euros each way.

Shop the Sant'Ambrogio market and cook

If you have a kitchen, the covered market at Sant'Ambrogio in the morning is a better afternoon than most museums: Tuscan white beans, pecorino, artichokes in spring, porcini in autumn, and stallholders who will tell you what to do with any of it. Outside, the open-air section sells produce at prices a third below the centre. The lunch counter inside, Trattoria da Rocco, serves a full meal for about twelve euros at shared tables.

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Late April to early June and September to October are the ideal windows — warm, long evenings and gardens at their best, though never truly quiet. July and August bring heat that sits in the stone streets well into the night and the heaviest crowds of the year, and many Florentines leave. November to March is the real secret: cold but rarely freezing, museums bookable a day ahead, restaurant tables available, and the city returned to the people who live in it. Easter and the first week of September are the two peak squeezes.

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Walk. The historic centre is barely two kilometres across, most of it is pedestrianised or restricted to residents' cars, and every major sight is within twenty-five minutes of every other. The tram is efficient but mainly serves the suburbs, with line two running from the airport to the main station in twenty minutes. Regional trains from Santa Maria Novella reach Siena, Pisa, Lucca and Bologna cheaply and frequently. Do not hire a car for the city — the restricted traffic zone is camera-enforced and the fines arrive months later at your home address.

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Italian, with English very widely spoken in the centre because of the visitor economy and the student population. Two streets into a residential neighbourhood that changes, and a few words of Italian make an immediate difference to how you are treated. Florentines have a local reputation for being sharp-tongued and slightly reserved with outsiders — they have had a great many of them — but the reserve disappears quickly with anyone who is not treating the city as a backdrop. Greetings are buongiorno until mid-afternoon and buonasera after.

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The American and international university programmes concentrate students around Santa Croce and Via Ghibellina, which is where travellers meet other travellers. To meet people who live here, go south of the river: Santo Spirito and San Frediano in the evening, or the bars around Sant'Ambrogio. The city has an active community of long-stay foreign residents, many working in art restoration and language teaching, and language exchange evenings run several nights a week in bars near Santa Croce. Hiking and cycling groups head into Chianti at weekends.

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How many days do I need in Florence?

Three is the honest minimum: one for the Duomo complex, one for the Uffizi and the Accademia, and one with no museums at all. Five lets you add the Oltrarno properly and a day trip to Siena or Lucca. Two days is possible but means queueing for most of it, which is the least enjoyable version of this city. The rhythm that works best is one major sight each morning and the neighbourhoods each evening.

Do I have to book museum tickets in advance?

For the Uffizi, the Accademia and the dome climb, yes — book timed slots online days or weeks ahead in season, and always through the official site rather than a reseller charging a large markup. For everything else, including the cathedral itself, the Bargello, Palazzo Vecchio and the Pitti, you can usually walk up. State museums are free on the first Sunday of each month, which means very long queues.

Is Florence expensive?

The centre is priced for visitors and the Oltrarno is not, and the gap is large. A glass of Chianti at a neighbourhood enoteca is four euros and eight in a piazza with a view; a lampredotto sandwich is five and a tourist-menu lunch is twenty-five. Accommodation is the main cost and rises steeply from April. Eating where the prices are in Italian and the menu has no photographs solves most of the problem.

How do I avoid the worst of the crowds?

Timing more than anything: the centre belongs to residents before nine in the morning and after nine at night, and the day-trip coaches arrive around eleven and leave by five. Go to the Duomo at opening, the Uffizi in the last slot, and spend the middle of the day across the river or in Sant'Ambrogio. Visiting between November and March removes the problem almost entirely.

Is it safe?

Very. Violent crime is rare and the centre is busy and well lit late into the evening. Pickpocketing around the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, the station and on the crowded bus to Piazzale Michelangelo is the only real concern. The area immediately around Santa Maria Novella station is scruffier at night than the rest of the centre but not dangerous.

Where should I stay?

The Oltrarno — San Frediano or Santo Spirito — for the best balance of atmosphere, price and being able to walk everywhere. Sant'Ambrogio for a quieter, more residential stay ten minutes from the Duomo. The centre itself is convenient and expensive and empties of local life. Avoid booking on the far side of the station unless the price difference is substantial; the walk back at night is dull rather than unsafe.

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