Italy · Tuscany
Plan your Florence trip
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01Your itinerary
02Where to stay
Centro Storico (around the Duomo)
Best for first-timers who want everything on footThe postcard core — everything within a fifteen-minute walk, dense with monuments and restaurants, and priced accordingly. Loud and crowded by day near the cathedral, but you are buying pure convenience.
Hotel De Lanzi
Look one or two streets back from the main pedestrian drag to keep the location without the crowd noise until late.
€€€B&B Repubblica
Central to a fault — you can walk to the Duomo, the Uffizi and the river in under ten minutes each.
€€Santa Croce
Best for food and a livelier evening sceneArtisan streets behind the basilica that have quietly become the city's best area for a night out — natural wine bars, small modern kitchens, and fewer tour groups than the centre proper, while still being a ten-minute walk from the Duomo.
Boutique Hotel La Casa di Morfeo
Sant'Ambrogio is the neighbourhood market locals actually use, and it is steps from the best of Santa Croce's new wine bars.
€€€Ghiberti House
A residential base with real Florentine daily life outside the door, a short walk from Santa Croce's sights.
€€Oltrarno (Santo Spirito & San Niccolò)
Best for repeat visitors and a quieter, local paceCross the river and the city slows down — working artisan streets, a genuine local aperitivo scene, and Piazzale Michelangelo within walking distance. Fewer big sights on the doorstep, but the most authentic neighbourhood feel in the centre.
Santo Spirito Rooms
The square's daily market and evening bar crowd give you the Florence locals actually inhabit, a five-minute bridge crossing from the centre.
€€Hotel Silla
Further from the crush, closer to the sunset climb up to Piazzale Michelangelo, and noticeably cheaper for it.
€€San Lorenzo & San Marco
Best for value and easy train accessNorth of the Duomo around the Medici chapels, the market halls and the university district — busier and more commercial by day, but well priced and close to both the Accademia and the train station for day trips.
Hotel Panorama
Ten minutes from the Duomo on foot and close to the Accademia, with rates well below the centro storico for the same walking distance.
€Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.
03Tickets & tours
The Duomo & Brunelleschi's dome
Filippo Brunelleschi's red-tiled dome, completed in 1436 without modern engineering, still dominates every rooftop view in the city.
Tip Book the dome climb separately and well in advance — it sells out days ahead and is capped for safety, unlike the cathedral itself.
Uffizi Gallery
The Medici's private collection turned into arguably the finest Renaissance painting museum on earth — Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera,…
Tip Book the earliest slot of the day; by mid-morning the Botticelli rooms are shoulder to shoulder.
Galleria dell'Accademia
Home to Michelangelo's David, seventeen feet of marble that photographs simply cannot prepare you for.
Tip The gallery is small — you can see everything worthwhile in under an hour, so pair it with a nearby San Lorenzo lunch.
Ponte Vecchio
The only Florence bridge to survive the Nazi retreat in 1944, lined since the 16th century with gold and jewellery shops stacked over the water on…
Tip Cross it at sunrise before the tour groups arrive, then loop back over the quieter Ponte Santa Trinita for the classic postcard view of it.
Piazzale Michelangelo
A hillside terrace above the Oltrarno with the single best panorama of the city — dome, towers, river and hills laid out in one uninterrupted sweep.
Tip Walk up through the San Niccolò steps and the rose garden rather than taking the road route — quieter and shadier in summer.
Basilica di Santa Croce
A Franciscan church turned pantheon of Italian genius — Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and Rossini are all buried here, beneath Giotto frescoes…
Tip Duck into the attached Scuola del Cuoio leather school through the church cloister to watch artisans working at the benches.
Mercato Centrale & San Lorenzo market
A cast-iron 19th-century market hall stacked with butchers, cheesemongers and produce on the ground floor, and a lively food court upstairs.
Tip Shop the ground floor for a picnic, then skip the upstairs food court's tourist prices for a lampredotto cart just outside instead.
Palazzo Pitti & Boboli Gardens
The Medici's later, grander home across the river, with royal apartments, a serious modern art collection, and the sprawling Boboli Gardens behind it…
Tip Buy the combined ticket and save the gardens for late afternoon, when the crowds thin and the light through the cypress avenues turns gold.
Day trips from Florence
Chianti wine country
Cypress-lined ridgelines, stone hill towns and cellar doors between Florence and Siena.
Day tripSiena
An hour and a half by regional bus or car, and Florence's great historic rival — a Gothic city built around the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo and a…
Day tripPisa
An hour by direct train, mostly for the Leaning Tower and its startlingly beautiful, uncrowded Piazza dei Miracoli.
Day tripEverything to do in Florence
Skip-the-line tickets, guided tours and day trips, all in one place on Booking.com.
04Getting there & around
Getting around
Walk. Florence's historic centre is barely a kilometre and a half across and almost entirely closed to private traffic in its core, a Zona a Traffico Limitato that keeps the centro storico blessedly free of cars.
Flights
Compare fares into Florence and pick dates that suit the days you planned.
Airport transfers
Book a private or shared ride from the airport so the first evening starts at your door, not at a ticket queue.
Car hire from Florence
Only worth it for day trips beyond the city — in town, the plan above works on foot and public transport.
Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.