Florence is small. Its queues are not.
Which Uffizi ticket lets you walk straight in, what the David costs without a guide, whether the dome climb is worth 463 steps, and how much a day in the Chianti hills runs to. Reviews of every tour and ticket you can book in Florence.
The four bookings a first Florence trip is built on.
Two galleries, one dome and a day in the hills. What each costs, and what travellers who went say about it.
01The first morningSkip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketA timed Uffizi slot instead of the queue on Piazzale degli Uffizi. Take the earliest one, before the coach groups reach the Vasari corridor.
02The twenty minutesTimed Entrance Ticket to Michelangelo’s DavidThe David has his own tribune and his own entrance ticket. Twenty minutes is honestly enough, and the timed entry is the whole trick.
03The climbBrunelleschi’s Dome Climb Entry Ticket & DuomoFour hundred and sixty three steps between the two shells of Brunelleschi’s dome, ending on the lantern with the whole city underneath.
04The day outTuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a WinerySiena, San Gimignano, Pisa and lunch at a winery in one coach day. The classic first trip out of the city walls.
A cellar under Florence, or a whole day in Chianti.
The wine is the reason half of Tuscany gets booked. Three shapes the day comes in, what it costs to join each one, and how far out of the city it takes you.
Nobody queues twice at the Uffizi.
Both big collections sell timed entry, both sell out in high season, and both are shut on Mondays. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the city.
- 1Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry Ticketfrom $30
- 2Timed Entrance Ticket to Michelangelo’s Davidfrom $26
- 3Michelangelo’s David Skip-the-Line Entry Ticketfrom $45
The Florence days travellers book more than any other.
Every Florence review →Tickets, classes and coach days that fill up weeks ahead, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry Ticket
Collect your timed ticket at Door 3, enter through Door 1, and spend as long as you like inside Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. See Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera, works by Michelangelo and da Vinci, and use the included English digital audio guide. Allow three to five hours.
From · $30
Read our review →
2
Tuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a Winery
from $114
3
Timed Entrance Ticket to Michelangelo’s David
from $26
4
Michelangelo’s David Skip-the-Line Entry Ticket
from $45
5
The Best tour in Florence: Renaissance & Medici Tales – guided by a STORYTELLER
from $3
6
Leonardo Interactive Museum Entry Ticket
from $9
7
The Best Tour in Florence: Renaissance and Medici Tales
from $3
8
Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
from $21
Tuscany starts twenty minutes past the Porta Romana.
Siena and its striped cathedral, the towers of San Gimignano, a leaning tower an hour west, five villages on the Ligurian cliffs. Most of them are a coach day from Santa Maria Novella, and most of them include the lunch.
What a day in Florence actually costs.
Every tour and ticket on the site, grouped by price. The gallery entries sit at the cheap end; the vineyard days and the balloons do not.
Timed gallery entries, the dome climb, guided walks through the centro and a pasta class with the wine included.
The coach days to Siena and Pisa, small-group Uffizi tours, cooking at a farmhouse, an afternoon in the Chianti cellars.
Private guides, sunrise over the vines in a balloon, chauffeured Val d’Orcia days and the food tours that run all evening.
Three things Florence does that nowhere else does.
Cathedrals and cooking classes exist in every Italian city. A hatch in a palace wall that sells you a glass of red, a dome you climb from the inside, and a workshop where the gold leaf is still beaten by hand do not.
The Wine Windows
Around a hundred and fifty small arched hatches are cut into the palace walls of the old centre, about the height of a wine flask. Renaissance families sold their estate wine through them straight onto the street, and during the plague years they were the one contactless counter in town. A handful reopened after 2020, and a few will still pass you a glass of Chianti through the stone.
- 1Florence Walk Tour + Wine Windows Option | Discover, Sip, Enjoy!★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 245 reviews
- 2City Highlights Walking Tour + Wine Windows Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 147 reviews
- 3Wine Windows Walk with Wine Tasting and Appetizers★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 56 reviews
Brunelleschi’s Dome
The dome was raised without a wooden frame, in a herringbone brick pattern nobody had used at that scale before, and it is still the largest masonry dome standing. The climb runs in the cavity between the inner and outer shells, so you come out level with Vasari’s Last Judgement before the last stair to the lantern. It is one way up and one way down, on timed entry, and there is no lift.
- 1Brunelleschi’s Dome Climb Entry Ticket & Duomo★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,815 reviews
- 2Duomo Guided Tour with Optional Dome Climb Upgrade★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 3,706 reviews
- 3Dome Climb Ticket & Duomo Complex 3-Day Pass★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,848 reviews
The Craftsmen’s Quarter
Cross the Ponte Vecchio and the ground floors change: gilders, bookbinders, mosaicists in hard stone, and the leather school in the back cloister of Santa Croce. Most workshops are one or two people deep and have been in the same doorway for generations. Several take visitors at the bench for an afternoon and send you home with the thing you made.
- 1Perfume Masterclass and Sensory Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 463 reviews
- 2Perfume Masterclass in Florence: Make your Own Personal Fragrance★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 253 reviews
- 3Handmade Tuscan Ceramics Masterclass in Montelupo★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 205 reviews
Four Florence bookings that will not wait for you.
This is a city you can improvise in, right up until the moment you cannot. These four run on timed entry slots, a lift that does not exist and a season that closes.
- 01Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketEntry is timed and capped. In summer the morning slots go a fortnight out, and the ticket desk queue is the alternative.
- 02Timed Entrance Ticket to Michelangelo’s DavidThe David sits in a small tribune with a hard capacity, and the gallery shuts on Mondays. Turn up without a slot and you are queueing on Via Ricasoli.
- 03Brunelleschi’s Dome Climb Entry Ticket & DuomoThe dome climb takes a reserved time to the minute, in groups, up a single staircase. There is no lift and no walk-up ticket.
- 04Balloon Flight Over TuscanyBalloons fly at first light between spring and early autumn, and the pilot cancels for wind on the morning. There are only a few baskets in the whole of Tuscany.
The Uffizi and the Accademia are shut on Mondays.
Both state galleries close for the day, and a fair few of the smaller collections follow them. It is the best Monday in Italy if you plan for it: the kitchens, the cellars and the hills are all open, and the centre is quieter without the gallery queues wrapped round it.
By landmark, and by how far out you are going
By kind of day. Gallery, kitchen, saddle or vineyard
The order most people end up doing Florence in.
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