Chapels & Churches

Brancacci Chapel

Tucked inside the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in the Oltrarno, this small chapel is where the Renaissance really got started. In the 1420s, a young painter named Masaccio filled its walls with scenes from the life of St. Peter, painting people with real weight, real shadows, and real emotion. His Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve in total despair, still stops people in their tracks. Michelangelo came here as a teenager to sketch them.

Practical Tip: Only 10 people are allowed in every 30 minutes, so booking ahead is required. Tickets are €15. Closed Tuesdays, but open Mondays, which makes it a perfect add-on to our Oltrarno day.

Dante’s Church (Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi)

A tiny, centuries-old church tucked down a narrow lane near Dante’s house. Legend says Dante married his wife Gemma here. More importantly, the family of Beatrice Portinari, the woman he loved from afar and wrote about in the Divine Comedy, is buried here. Visitors leave handwritten notes to Beatrice in a basket by her tomb, asking for help with their love lives.

Practical Tip: Free and only takes about 10 minutes. It’s right between the Duomo and Piazza della Signoria, so it’s easy to pop in on the walking tour. Bring a pen and paper if you want to leave a note!

Magi Chapel (Palazzo Medici Riccardi)

Before the Medici moved into palaces across the river, this was their family home, and tucked inside is a tiny private chapel covered wall to wall in color. In 1459, Benozzo Gozzoli painted the Three Kings’ procession to Bethlehem, but the travelers are really the Medici themselves, dressed in gold and riding through the Tuscan hills. Look for a young Lorenzo the Magnificent on a white horse.

Practical Tip: Tickets are about €15. The chapel only lets in 10 people every 5 minutes, so go early or book a slot. Closed Wednesdays. It’s around the corner from San Lorenzo, so it fits right into Friday.

Ognissanti & Botticelli’s Tomb

The Vespucci family’s parish church (yes, the family of Amerigo, who gave America its name). Sandro Botticelli is buried here under a simple round marker in a side chapel. Legend says he asked to rest near Simonetta Vespucci, the famous beauty many believe was his model for The Birth of Venus, who is also buried here. Inside the church, his fresco of St. Augustine faces a matching St. Jerome by Ghirlandaio across the nave. Next door, Ghirlandaio’s Last Supper fills the old dining hall of the convent.

Practical Tip: Free. Church hours are limited and the Last Supper opens only a few mornings a week, so check before you go. It’s a short walk from Santa Maria Novella, so pair it with Saturday.

San Marco Museum

A peaceful Dominican convent where the painter-monk Fra Angelico decorated every friar’s cell with a fresco meant for quiet prayer. Climb the stairs and his Annunciation is waiting at the top, one of the loveliest paintings in Florence. Wander the corridors to find the cell of Savonarola, the fiery friar behind the “Bonfire of the Vanities,” still holding his belongings.

Practical Tip: Hours are short and tricky: weekday mornings only, longer on Saturdays, and closed some Sundays and Mondays. Just 5 minutes from the Accademia, so Friday or Saturday morning works best.

Museums & Historic Houses

La Specola

Florence’s natural history museum, opened in 1775 and one of the oldest science museums in the world. It’s famous for two very different things: rooms full of taxidermy animals, including a hippo that once belonged to the Medici, and an astonishing collection of 18th-century wax anatomical models used to teach doctors. Fascinating, a little eerie, and not for the squeamish.

Practical Tip: Near Palazzo Pitti in the Oltrarno. Hours vary, so check before planning it into Monday.

Museo degli Innocenti (Hospital of the Innocents)

Designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in 1419, this foundling hospital is considered the very first Renaissance building, and it cared for abandoned babies for nearly 600 years. Look up at the arcade on Piazza della Santissima Annunziata and you’ll see blue and white terracotta roundels of swaddled babies by Andrea della Robbia.

At the far end of the arcade is the story that makes this place so moving: la ruota dei gettatelli, the wheel of the foundlings. Mothers who couldn’t care for their babies placed them in a revolving wheel set into the wall, turned it, and rang a bell, so the child was taken in without anyone seeing who left them. Many left half of a medal or token with the baby, hoping to come back one day and match it. The museum still displays these heartbreaking tokens. So many children grew up here that Innocenti and Nocentini are still common Florentine last names.

Practical Tip: €9, open daily 10 AM to 7 PM. Don’t miss the rooftop Caffè del Verone, which has a great Duomo view and doesn’t require a museum ticket. About 5 minutes from the Accademia, so it’s easy to add Friday.

Museo Galileo

Galileo’s own telescopes, the lens he used to discover Jupiter’s moons, and gorgeous Medici-era globes and scientific instruments. And yes, the most talked-about object in the museum is Galileo’s actual middle finger, preserved in a glass case.

Practical Tip: About €12. Right on the river behind the Uffizi, so it pairs well with a Saturday Uffizi visit. Check hours, since Tuesdays are shorter.

Palazzo Davanzati

Ever wondered how wealthy Florentines actually lived in the 1300s? This merchant’s house is still set up as a home, with painted walls that look like tapestries, an early indoor toilet, and the kitchen on the top floor, so a kitchen fire wouldn’t take the whole house down.

Practical Tip: €8, or free with our 72-hour museum pass. A few minutes from Piazza della Signoria, so it’s an easy Saturday add-on.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Biblioteca delle Oblate

This public library was once a convent for women who nursed the sick at the hospital next door. It was founded by Folco Portinari, Beatrice’s father, so it’s a fun follow-up to Dante’s Church. Today it’s where Florentine students study, and the café upstairs opens onto a terrace with one of the best close-up views of the Duomo anywhere.

Practical Tip: Free to walk in. Grab a coffee on the terrace for a fraction of what the cafés on the piazza charge. Just a few minutes from the Duomo.

Biblioteca Nazionale & the Mud Angels

On November 4, 1966, the Arno burst its banks and flooded Florence, with water rising over 20 feet in the Santa Croce neighborhood. Italy’s National Central Library sits right on the river there, and about 1.3 million of its books and documents were buried in mud. Within days, thousands of volunteers poured in from all over Italy and the world, mostly young students. They formed human chains to pass soaked books out of the basements, scraped mud from paintings, and dug out churches. Florentines called them gli angeli del fango, the Mud Angels. Restoration work on some of those books is still going on today.

Practical Tip: The library is a working research library, not a tourist site, but you can see the building on the river right next to Santa Croce. Look for plaques around the neighborhood marking how high the water rose. This November is the 60th anniversary of the flood.

Wine Windows (Buchette del Vino)

Keep an eye out for tiny arched doors at hand height in palace walls. In the 1600s, wealthy families sold wine from their own vineyards straight through these little windows, no middleman needed. During the plague of the 1630s, they became an early form of contactless service. There are well over 100 of them around the city, and a few reopened during COVID to serve wine, coffee, and gelato.

Practical Tip: Our Saturday scavenger hunt! The Oltrarno has some of the best, including a few around Santo Spirito, so keep looking Monday too.