Tuscany · Italy
The city that invented the Renaissance, surrounded by the landscape that appears behind every painting in it.
Photo: Rhododendrites · CC BY-SA 4.0
Florence spent the fifteenth century inventing most of what we mean by European art. Perspective was worked out here, in Brunelleschi's experiments and Masaccio's frescoes in a side chapel across the river. The dome that Brunelleschi raised over the cathedral between 1420 and 1436 — still the largest masonry dome ever constructed, built without a supporting framework by a goldsmith who refused to explain how he intended to do it — is the emblem of that century, and you can climb the 463 steps between its two shells and see the trick from inside.
What makes the city almost unreasonable is the concentration. The Uffizi, the Accademia, the Bargello, the Palazzo Pitti, Santa Croce, the Brancacci Chapel and San Marco are all within a twenty-five minute walk of each other, and between them hold Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Michelangelo's David, Donatello's bronzes, Fra Angelico's cells and the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli. Florence is small — you can cross the historic centre in half an hour — and it is not remotely possible to exhaust it in a week.
The other half of this destination begins at the city gates. Tuscany is the landscape the Renaissance painted into its backgrounds: cypress avenues, hill towns on ridges, and the clay hills of the Val d'Orcia, which is a UNESCO site precisely because it was cultivated into a picture of good government. Siena is an hour away and is a complete medieval city rather than a Renaissance one. San Gimignano still has fourteen of its towers. Montalcino makes Brunello and Montepulciano makes Vino Nobile, and both are worth the drive for reasons beyond the wine.
Why visit
Florence is where the modern idea of an artist, a museum and a perspective drawing all come from — and it is small enough to see on foot.
Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Masaccio and Fra Angelico are all in one square kilometre, largely in the buildings they were painted for. No other city comes close to the density.
Raised without centring over an octagon nobody knew how to span, finished in 1436, and climbable between its inner and outer shells — you see the herringbone brickwork that makes it stand up.
Chianti's vineyards, Siena's shell-shaped campo, San Gimignano's towers and the Val d'Orcia's clay hills are all within an hour and a half. City and countryside in one trip, without moving base.
Chianti Classico, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano are made in three areas you can visit in a day each, at estates that take walk-in tastings seriously.
Tuscan cooking is bread, beans, olive oil and grilled meat — bistecca alla fiorentina, ribollita, pici — designed around not wasting anything and executed with total conviction.
Main attractions
Four of these are inside Florence and four are outside it. Trying to do all eight in three days is the standard mistake.
The Medici collection in Vasari's sixteenth-century office building: Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo's Annunciation, Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, Titian's Venus of Urbino and Caravaggio's Medusa.
Tip Book a timed slot for opening. Three hours is realistic; the corridor windows over the Arno are worth stopping at.
Brunelleschi's dome, Giotto's campanile, the Baptistery with Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise — the originals now in the Museo dell'Opera opposite — and the cathedral itself, which is free and comparatively plain inside.
Tip One combined pass covers dome, campanile, baptistery and museum. The dome climb is 463 steps, timed, and must be booked.
Michelangelo's David, moved here in 1873 to protect it from the weather, at the end of a hall lined with his unfinished Prisoners struggling out of their blocks — which are arguably the more interesting works.
Tip Book ahead. An hour is plenty; the copy standing outside Palazzo Vecchio shows you where it was meant to be seen.
Santa Croce holds the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli and Giotto's frescoes; the Bargello, in a medieval prison, has Donatello's bronze David and the best sculpture collection in Italy after the Vatican.
Tip The Bargello is one of the quietest major museums in the city. Go when the Uffizi queue defeats you.
The vast Medici palace across the river with the Palatine Gallery's Raphaels hung floor to ceiling as they were in the eighteenth century, and formal gardens climbing the hill behind it.
Tip The Boboli is a hot, steep, largely shadeless climb. Beautiful in spring, punishing in August.
An hour south: a complete Gothic city built on three ridges around the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, with a striped marble cathedral, the Piccolomini Library's frescoes and the Palio run twice each summer.
Tip The bus from Florence is faster and more central than the train. The cathedral's inlaid floor is uncovered only for part of the year.
Fourteen surviving tower-houses of an original seventy-odd standing over a hill town, reached through the Chianti hills — vineyards, cypress avenues and stone villages between Florence and Siena.
Tip San Gimignano is packed from 10:00 to 17:00 and lovely outside those hours. Stay the night, or go late.
A UNESCO landscape of clay hills, lone cypresses and hilltop towns south of Siena: Pienza, built as a Renaissance ideal city; Montalcino for Brunello; Montepulciano for Vino Nobile; Bagno Vignoni's thermal pool in the main square.
Tip This needs a car and a full day, and rewards two. The light in the last hour before sunset is the reason people photograph it.
Things to do
Two days of art, two days of countryside, and one spare — that is the shape of a good Florence week.
Four hundred and sixty-three steps up a passage between the dome's two shells, past Vasari's Last Judgment frescoes at close range, out onto the lantern with the whole city and the hills below.
Tip Booked timed entry only. Not for anyone claustrophobic — the final stairs are steep, narrow and one-way.
The city's real street food: the fourth stomach of a cow, simmered for hours, chopped into a bun with salsa verde and the top of the roll dipped in the broth. Sold from trippai carts since the fifteenth century.
Tip Around three or four euros. The carts at Sant'Ambrogio and the Mercato Centrale are the reliable ones.
The SR222 Chiantigiana runs from Florence to Siena through Greve, Panzano and Castellina, past estates that pour Chianti Classico — the ones with the black rooster seal — for walk-in visitors.
Tip Nominate a driver or book a tour. Tuscan roads plus tastings is a bad combination and the police test for it.
Above Piazzale Michelangelo, the Romanesque church of San Miniato al Monte looks down the length of the city. The monks sing vespers in Gregorian chant most late afternoons.
Tip Walk up through the Rose Garden rather than taking the bus, and stay for the chant before the light goes.
Sant'Ambrogio for the neighbourhood market Florentines actually use, the Mercato Centrale for the food hall upstairs and the butchers and cheesemongers below.
Tip Both finish by early afternoon. Buy pecorino, finocchiona and bread and eat it in the Boboli or on the Arno.
An hour and a quarter west, Lucca's Renaissance ramparts survive complete and are now a four-kilometre tree-lined park you can ride around above the rooftops.
Tip Bike hire is by the hour at several gates. Combine with Pisa, twenty minutes further, for the tower.
Local food
Tuscan cooking is cucina povera taken seriously: stale bread, beans, olive oil, offal and a very good piece of beef, with almost no sauce and no apology.
A T-bone of Chianina beef, three or four fingers thick, grilled over embers and served blue-rare with nothing but salt, oil and lemon. Priced by weight, usually a kilo minimum, and meant to be shared.
Where to try it Traditional Florentine trattorias. Ordering it well done will be politely refused in the good places.
Two bread soups: ribollita, of black cabbage, beans and stale bread, boiled again the next day until it is nearly solid; and pappa al pomodoro, the summer tomato version. Both finished with raw olive oil.
Where to try it Any trattoria in autumn and winter. Tuscan bread is unsalted, which is why it works in soup.
Florence's street food, sold from carts: tripe stewed with tomato, or lampredotto in a bun with green sauce and chilli. Cheap, ancient and eaten standing up by people on their lunch break.
Where to try it The trippai carts near the Mercato Centrale, Sant'Ambrogio and Porta Romana.
Pici are thick hand-rolled Sienese noodles served with garlic sauce or cacio e pepe; pappardelle are wide ribbons, classically with wild boar ragù. Southern Tuscany's two great pastas.
Where to try it Siena, Montalcino and the Val d'Orcia, where both belong. Pici all'aglione is the local test.
Sangiovese in three expressions: Chianti Classico from the hills between Florence and Siena, Brunello from Montalcino and Vino Nobile from Montepulciano. The black rooster seal marks true Chianti Classico.
Where to try it Estates take walk-ins with a call ahead. Enotecas in Greve, Montalcino and Montepulciano pour by the glass.
Hard almond biscuits dunked in sweet vin santo to finish a meal, and gelato, which Florence claims to have invented at the Medici court. Pistachio should be dull brown-green, never bright.
Where to try it Gelaterie with covered steel tubs and 'produzione propria' on the door — not the heaped fluorescent displays.
Accommodation
Florence's centre is small enough that anywhere inside the ring is walkable; the real decision is whether to sleep in the city at all or out in the hills.
Transport
Florence sits on the high-speed line halfway between Rome and Milan, which makes arriving by train easier than flying for most European trips.
Florence is walked. Tuscany is driven, with one important exception in Siena.
When to go
The city is stone and airless in high summer and the countryside is at its best in late spring and at harvest. The two shoulder windows are not a compromise here — they are simply better.
Wisteria over the walls, green hills, 18–27°C and long light evenings. Everything is open and the Val d'Orcia is at its most photogenic before the wheat turns.
Above 35°C, with the centre trapping heat and the museum queues in full sun. Crowds peak, prices peak, and many family restaurants close around Ferragosto.
The pick of the year. The vendemmia brings the hills to life, white truffles arrive in October, the light is extraordinary and the crowds fall away after the first week of September.
Cold, sometimes damp, and by far the best time to see the art — the Uffizi and the Accademia are walk-in. Some country agriturismi and hill-town restaurants close entirely.
Worth planning around: Siena on 2 July and 16 August, unless the Palio is the reason you came. The city is full, prices treble and the race itself lasts about ninety seconds after a day of waiting.
Itinerary
Three days on the city, two on the countryside, with a hire car collected on day four. Reverse it if you would rather finish in Florence.
The cathedral complex and the streets around it.
The great collection, then across the river.
Michelangelo, Donatello and Fra Angelico.
South through the vineyards.
Clay hills, cypresses and two great wines.
Travel tips
Florence rewards booking and punishes driving. Most of what goes wrong here comes down to one of those two things.
FAQ
Three for the city and two more for Tuscany, so five in total. Florence itself is small and walkable but extremely dense — the Uffizi alone takes three hours. Three days covers the Duomo complex, the Uffizi, the Accademia and one or two of the quieter museums without exhaustion. Add two days with a car for Chianti, Siena and the Val d'Orcia.
The Uffizi, the Accademia and the dome climb, all of which are timed-entry and sell out in high season. The dome releases limited slots and goes first. Santa Croce, the Bargello, San Marco and the Brancacci Chapel are generally fine on the day, and the cathedral itself is free to enter.
For the countryside, yes — Chianti, the Val d'Orcia and the small hill towns have thin bus service and poor connections. For Florence itself, absolutely not: the ZTL covers the entire centre and is camera-enforced. Collect the car on the day you leave the city and drop it before you return, and never drive inside a town's walls.
Yes, and it is one of the best in Italy — an hour and a quarter by coach, arriving near the centre. Siena is a complete Gothic city rather than a Renaissance one, and the shell-shaped Campo, the striped cathedral and the Piccolomini Library make a full day. Better still, sleep there one night: it empties in the evening and is a different place after the day-trippers leave.
April to early June and September to October. Spring gives green hills and long evenings; autumn brings the grape harvest, white truffles in October and the year's best light. July and August exceed 35°C in a city built of stone, with peak crowds and prices. Winter is cold but the museums become walk-in, which is a genuine argument for it.
Both, if you have five days. Three nights in Florence, on foot and without a car, then two nights at a Chianti agriturismo or in the Val d'Orcia. Splitting the stay removes two hours of daily driving and puts you in the hill towns during the evenings, when the coaches have gone and they are at their best.
The clay-hill landscape south of Siena — cypress avenues, lone farmhouses and hilltop towns — listed by UNESCO in 2004 because it was deliberately shaped in the Renaissance into an image of good government, and is the landscape behind countless paintings. Pienza, Montalcino, Montepulciano and Bagno Vignoni are the anchors. It needs a car and rewards a full day, ideally ending at sunset.
Keep exploring
Places that pair well with Florence, whether you have a few spare days or are building a longer route.
Lazio, Italy
The only capital where a Roman amphitheatre, a Renaissance basilica and a Baroque fountain are all a ten-minute walk apart, and where the best paintings are free in parish churches.
Don't miss The Pantheon — a working building since AD 126, still holding the largest unreinforced concrete dome on earth.
Explore Destination — RomeLiguria, Italy
A UNESCO cultural landscape on the Ligurian coast where vines are grown on cliff terraces, no cars reach the villages, and the local train is the bus.
Don't miss Walking the coast path between the villages, four hundred metres above the sea on walls built by hand over eight centuries.
Explore Destination — The Cinque TerreVeneto, Italy
The strangest working city in Europe — Byzantine mosaics, Tintoretto by the acre, cicchetti bars down alleys, and a lagoon of glass furnaces and coloured houses behind it.
Don't miss The Grand Canal from the deck of a number 1 vaporetto, which costs the price of a bus ticket.
Explore Destination — VeniceVaucluse, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
A landscape of ochre cliffs, perched stone villages and vineyards between the Rhône and the Alps, with the best-preserved Roman monuments outside Italy on its western edge.
Don't miss The Pont du Gard, a three-tier Roman aqueduct that has stood for two thousand years without mortar.
Explore Destination — Provence & the LuberonRead next
Heritage
A UNESCO listing tells you a place matters; it does not tell you whether it is worth two days and a detour. This is how to read the list usefully — and which sites reward building a trip around them.
Planning
Most first European trips go wrong in the same three ways: too many cities, too little time in each, and a route shaped by a cheap flight rather than by geography. Here is how to avoid all three.
Transport
European rail is excellent and confusing — six national operators, three completely different pricing models, and a rail pass that is either a bargain or a waste depending on where you are going. Here is how to work out which.
Advertisement
.jpg){kind=link}