5 TOP SIGHTS IN FLORENCE



Duomo and Battistero

Built over six centuries (the façade was finished only in 1887), the cathedral is famous above all for Brunelleschi’s huge 15th-century terracotta-tiled cupola, still the biggest masonry dome in the world (1). Other highlights include Paolo Uccello’s iconic fresco of British mercenary commander Sir John Hawkwood; Giotto’s graceful campanile (belltower), with stunning views from the top of its 414 steps; and Lorenzo Ghiberti’s intricately carved bronze Baptistery doors.

Duomo (00 39 055 230 2885, Piazza del Duomo. Open daily, 10am-5pm; entrance free. Dome ascent Mon-Fri, 8.30am-7pm, Sat 8.30am-5.40pm, closed Sun; admission €8. Campanile daily, 8.30am-7.30pm; admission free. Baptistery (interior) Mon-Sat, 11.15-7pm, Sun 8.30am-2pm; admission €5.

Piazza della Signoria and Ponte Vecchio
If the Duomo is Florence’s spiritual centre, its civic hub is Piazza della Signoria (2), a wide square dominated by the crenellated medieval town hall of Palazzo Vecchio, packed with artworks designed to glorify (or in the case of the windowless Studiolo of bookish Francesco I, provide a private refuge for) the ruling Medici dynasty. Ponte Vecchio, the oldest of the bridges across the River Arno, may seem a tourist souk these days, but it’s been lined by shops ever since it was rebuilt in 1345, after its wooden predecessor was washed away in a flood.
Palazzo Vecchio (00 39 055 276 8325, Open Mon-Wed and Fri-Sun, 9am-midnight; Thu, 9am-2pm. Full-price ticket €6.50/€10 with tower.


Galleria degli Uffizi
Italy’s richest and most celebrated art gallery (3), is housed in what was originally built as the Medici Whitehall – the governing dynasty’s administrative centre. It’s difficult to pick out the cherries from an already cherry-picked selection (there’s lots more in the vaults), but they would have to include Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi, Botticelli’s Primavera and Birth of Venus, Piero della Francesca’s twin portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, and Michelangelo’s Tondo Doni. Booking, however, is virtually essential: see Telegraph tips below for advice.
Uffizi Gallery (00 39 055 294 883, Piazzale degli Uffizi. Open Tue-Sun, 8.15am-6.50pm, closed Mon. Full-price ticket €6.50, or €10 during special exhibitions, plus €4 for pre-booking.


Palazzo Medici Riccardi
Masaccio and Masolino’s frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel are better known – and very lovely they are too, breathing the simple humanism of the early Renaissance. But it’s well worth making time for the other great Florentine fresco cycle, decorating the private chapel of this mid-15th-century Medici palazzo: Benozzo Gozzoli’s Journey of the Magi, a lively transposition of the Biblical story to the Florence of 1439 (4).
Palazzo Medici Riccardi (00 39 055 276 0340, Via Cavour 3. Open Mon, Tue and Thu-Sun, 9am-7pm; closed Wed. Full-price ticket €7.


La Specola
Florence University’s natural history museum (5), houses a charmingly old-fashioned collection of botanical and zoological specimens, including a hippo that was given as a present to Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo. But the final rooms are what most visitors come for: a series of increasingly gruesome wax anatomical models, sculpted in eye-popping detail between 1775 and 1791 as teaching aids for trainee doctors. Smaller children may be traumatised, but difficult-to-please teens (and boys of all ages) should enjoy being grossed out – especially by the collection’s coup de grace: three grisly wax tableaux of plague victims.
La Specola (00 39 055 228 8251, Via Romana 17. Open Tue-Sun 10.30-5.30, closed Mon. Full-price ticket €6.


DAY TRIPS

Prato
A cloth-trading centre since the Middle Ages, Prato is today ringed by textile factories. But the centro storico is a delight, and in the stripey Pisan-Romanesque Duomo it has one of Tuscany’s great fresco cycles: Filippo Lippi’s scenes from the lives of John the Baptists and St Stephen. Lippi fell in love with a beautiful novice while painting the frescoes and abducted her before she could take holy orders; she became the mother of Filippino, and was reputedly the model for the voluptuous Salome in the Feast of Herod panel.
Prato is best reached by train (15 minutes) from Florence’s main Santa Maria Novella station: timetables and fares at train stations.


SHOPPING

The main fashion shopping area is immediately north and north-west of Ponte Vecchio. For the big-name luxury boutiques, head for elegant Via Tornabuoni. Here you'll find Prada, Gucci, Bulgari and others, plus the outlets of three native Florentine designers: 1960s bikini maven Emilio Pucci (at No 20r), king of feline spots and stripes Roberto Cavalli (No 83r, next to the designer's Giacosa café) and, best of all, the mothership boutique of the city's own footwear and fashion empire, Salvatore Ferragamo (Nos 4r-14r).
The high-street chains cluster around Piazza Repubblica, or in the two parallel streets that head north from Ponte Vecchio. For one-offs and craft shops, you need to head away from these main streets.
Good hunting grounds on the Duomo side of the river are the Santa Croce area or the streets just south of Santa Maria Novella – where the wonderful historic herbalist and perfumery the Officina di Santa Maria Novella (Via della Scala 16, is worth a look even if you're not in the market for soaps, bath oils, colognes, smelling salts and other fragrant goodies.
But Florence's craftsmen's quarter per eccellenza is the Oltrarno, the area of the centro storico just south of the river. Highlights include handmade paper workshop Il Torchio (Via dei Bardi 17), Aprosio (Via Santo Spirito 11), where all the jewellery and accessories are made from minute glass beads, and contemporary milliner Antonio Gatto (Piazza Pitti 5), whose hats are for once both beautiful and wearable.