Florence Travel Guide

Florence is the Renaissance made walkable — a compact city where the movement that reshaped Western art was born, and where its masterpieces still hang where they were made. The Uffizi holds Botticelli's Birth of Venus; the Accademia, Michelangelo's David; and Brunelleschi's terracotta dome still crowns the skyline as the engineering marvel it was six hundred years ago. Climb it, or the neighbouring bell tower, for a view across a sea of red roofs to the Tuscan hills.

At ground level the city is all leather markets, gelato, and the gold-shop-lined Ponte Vecchio spanning the Arno. Cross the river to the Oltrarno for artisan workshops and the Boboli Gardens, then take an aperitivo as the light turns amber. Small enough to cross on foot yet impossibly rich, Florence is also the gateway to Tuscany — Siena, San Gimignano, and the vineyards of Chianti all within easy reach.