Museums in Firenze: Part 1

Feb 9, 2024
4 min read

Updated: Feb 11, 2024

I have been living for approximately 4 months in Florence, Italy and have visited quite some museums. Some I paid for and some for free :)))

Yes for free! Florence as well as Italy as a whole, offers a lot of free museums to visit on the first Sunday of the month. Some are only free for residents and some are free for everyone!

This is the first part of my blog on the museum of Florence since I visited many and still am until the day I will leave Italy. So don't miss the second part coming later.

Piazza del Duomo

My very first "museum" was with my sister (can you call a cathedral a museum?!). She came to visit me and we bought tickets to visit the Duomo or more official Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. This is the eye-catcher of Firenze (and for a good reason, she is beautiful <3 ) and for sure a building/monument you will not miss. You can enter for free inside the Duomo but I wanted to go to the top, and for this you need to buy the Brunelleschi pass. At a designated time you arrive, and with a bunch of people climb up 463 steps in a small staircase. Very cool though to arrive at the top and have this beautiful view of Florence! Lacking for the first time since here, the view of the Brunelleschi's Dome itself, since we were on top of it!

The inside of the Cupula has these gorgeous frescoes you can admire from up-close when climbing to the top of the Dome, otherwise you have to admire them from more afar.

Our purchased ticket also granted us access to the Baptistery of San Giovanni, Giotto's Bell Tower, the Opera del Duomo Museum and the ancient basilica of Santa Reparata.

So after our little hike we went to the Opera del Duomo Museum, here you get more explanations on the history of the church and see some removed paintings and statues, this was very nice, but don't lose to much time here, watching the "real Duomo" is more worth your time.

Right afterwards we went to the baptistery, this is much smaller and round and was the place Florentines got baptized, the inside is full of shiny and gold mosaic (right picture)! So pretty even though we couldn't see the ceiling (the prettiest part due to reparation's).

The following day we climbed up the bell tower, a good 414 steps, but with many floors where you have a glorious view to take a break and enjoy the dome (the first duomo picture on this blog is taken from this tower!), which you can see this time!

Right after we went inside the Santa Reparata, this is an ancient basilica of the first Christian temples in the history of Florence. This was very impressing since it is very old but also very crowded and underground so a bit claustrophobic and humid. This concludes everything for the Piazza del Duomo!

Palazzo Pitti & Boboli gardens

So my very first free museum day (emphasis on free since how cool is it to do free museums!) was in the beginning of November. My sister was still here since her flight got delayed due to storms so we were able to do even more together in Florence #sistertime.

We ended up visiting together Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli gardens.

Palazzo Pitti is a beautiful and huge palace in the middle of the southern part of Firenze and had a lot of different rooms with different art galleries. The most beautiful rooms where in the Galleria Palatina with gold decorated ceilings and frescoes everywhere! Very luxurious.

These kinds of locations evoke curiosity about what life must have been like when they were still in active use.

After some time we finished visiting every floor and every room cause this is a very big palace and quite busy on the free Sundays, as expected, and went for a stroll in the Boboli gardens. It was such a beautiful sunny day and we really enjoyed our walk even though this garden has a lot of elevations, so you are constantly walking the hill up or down!

It is nicely decorated with ancient and Renaissance statues which remind you this is not a regular park, and also 2 fountains are present given place for some very cozy book reading and tanning spots.

I found this garden very nice but it is normally quite pricy, so I would for sure recommend on the free Sundays but otherwise not really. While the Palazzo Pitti, has a few free galleries on this Sunday and would for sure recommend, there is a lot more to visit of exhibitions and galleries for which you do need to pay. I didn't find time or energy to visit them but they all look quite nice.

Le Gallerie degli Uffizi

The next weekend a friend from Belgium, Siebe, came to visit me, and of course we also did a museum. We went to le Gallerie degli Uffizi. The Gallery, housed in a building constructed from 1560 to 1580 by Giorgio Vasari, covers the first two floors and is renowned for its vast collection of ancient sculptures and paintings spanning from the Middle Ages to the Modern period. It features masterpieces by artists like Giotto, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, among others, and includes notable works from European painters. Additionally, it contains a precious collection of ancient statues and busts from the Medici family, showcasing Roman copies of lost Greek sculptures.

This museum was so pretty, like it is huge (we spent 3 and a half hours inside), but so interesting and full of very known and popular work, definitely would recommend when coming to Florence.