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What to see in Florence in 3 days: day-by-day itinerary

Quick answer. Day 1 is a Monday, when the big museums close: walk the Duomo, Piazza della Signoria and the Ponte Vecchio at dusk. Day 2: climb Brunelleschi's dome, see the Baptistery, Palazzo Vecchio and Santa Croce, then watch the sunset from Piazzale Michelangelo. Day 3: Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, lunch in San Frediano and Masaccio's frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel.

  • Planned for April 19 – 21
  • 3 days
  • 15 stops
  • 7 audio guides along the way
See the day-by-day plan

Mappu planned this route around its dates: weather, sunsets and opening days. This opens the planner with the destination and trip length filled in; you choose your dates, pace and interests. Generating the full plan needs a free account.

What you will see each day

A short version of every day. Stops with a Mappu audio guide link straight to it, so you can listen on site or before you go.

  1. Day 1 · Arrival in Florence: Duomo Gold at Dusk, the Signoria's Stone and Dinner on Piazza Santo Spirito

    Arrive at Santa Maria Novella, settle into Santo Spirito, then see the Duomo, Piazza della Signoria and the Ponte Vecchio at dusk.

    Self-guided walk for this day

  2. Day 2 · The Renaissance Core: Dome, Baptistery, Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce and Sunset Above the City

    Climb Brunelleschi's dome, visit the Baptistery, Palazzo Vecchio and Santa Croce, then watch the sunset from Piazzale Michelangelo.

    Self-guided walk for this day

  3. Day 3 · Oltrarno Morning: Pitti, Boboli, a San Frediano Lunch and the Road Home

    Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, lunch in San Frediano, the Brancacci Chapel and a last Oltrarno loop before you leave.

    Self-guided walk for this day

The full itinerary, with the map and travel notes

Every stop with its notes, the route on the map, and tips on transport, budget and packing.

Florence 3-Day Itinerary
The Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio, Ponte Vecchio, Santa Croce, Oltrarno and the Boboli Gardens

Planned with Mappu

Florence — The Renaissance Heart and the Oltrarno Soul, 19–21 April

🚊

Mixed Transport

Apr 19 | Mon

Arrival in Florence: Duomo Gold at Dusk, the Signoria's Stone and Dinner on Piazza Santo Spirito
Season Snapshot: your dates land in Florence's classic late-April spring — bright, mild and famously changeable, with comfortable daytime warmth that can flip into a passing shower and cool evenings that want a jacket. Pack thin layers, a packable rain shell, broken-in walking shoes and one smart-casual outfit; the plan below keeps your afternoons flexible so a wet hour never wrecks a day. Arrival: since your home city isn't fixed yet, build the journey around Florence's two classic gateways. Firenze Santa Maria Novella is the main railway station and sits roughly a ten-minute walk from the Duomo, while Amerigo Vespucci airport lies only a few kilometres from the centre. Which bus, tram or shuttle currently links the airport to town — and how often — changes with operator schedules, so treat the arrival window as flexible until your ticket is booked rather than chaining a timed visit to it. Autolinee Toscane runs the city's urban bus network and publishes an official network map that was current as of 2026; that map is the one file worth downloading before you land, and it is also the reliable place to check any city bus you might want later in the trip. Once you're in the centre, Florence is a walking city: nearly everything across your three days sits inside a twenty-minute stroll.
Touchdown in Florence: Firenze Santa Maria Novella and the First Walk to the Duomo
Firenze Santa Maria NovellaGoogle Maps
Florence greets most travellers at Santa Maria Novella, and the station itself is a piece of history: the pale, horizontal 1930s rationalist building by Giovanni Michelucci's Tuscan Group was a manifesto of modern Italian architecture, and it opens straight onto the square where Alberti's green-and-white marble façade fronts the Dominican basilica of Santa Maria Novella — the first great Renaissance façade in the city, hiding Masaccio's Holy Trinity and Ghirlandaio's Tornabuoni chapel frescoes inside. From the forecourt, walk out along Via de' Panzani and Via de' Cerretani. Ten minutes of ordinary Florentine street life — bar counters, hotel doors, scooters leaning against walls — and then the street narrows and there it is: the Duomo rising above the rooftops, Brunelleschi's cupola exactly where the postcards put it. Don't rush that first sighting; it is the moment people remember from their first hour in Florence. Arriving by air at Amerigo Vespucci simply means making the same approach from the western edge of the centre, so drop the bags and take the same walk. Nothing is scheduled before late afternoon today, so the whole plan flexes around whatever hour you land.

Notes

Timing is deliberately left open: no duration or departure time is promised here, and no fixed visit is chained to your arrival hour. If you land late, skip straight to dinner and slide the golden-hour walk into tomorrow evening — the square and the bridge need no ticket and keep no closing time.
Check In and Unpack in the Oltrarno: Santo Spirito as Your Base for Three Days
Piazza Santo SpiritoGoogle Maps
Here is the expert call for a couple who want Renaissance mornings and lamplit artisan evenings: base yourselves in the Oltrarno, the left-bank quarter that begins the moment you cross the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge that symbolically marks the start of this side of the city. Santo Spirito is the sweet spot — a lived-in piazza with a Brunelleschi church at one end and neighbourhood trattorie at the other, ten minutes on foot from Palazzo Pitti, Boboli and the bridge, and a world away from the tour groups once the afternoon thins out. This is genuinely the city's workshop quarter: around San Frediano and along Via dei Serragli the old botteghe still work, and many keep deep cellars and hidden passages behind their street doors. Priority zones, in order: first Santo Spirito and San Frediano, best for atmosphere, food and workshops; second the Santa Croce quarter on the right bank, quieter at night and closer to the Duomo; third the Duomo and San Lorenzo blocks, unbeatable for walking distance but busiest and priciest. On a mid-range budget an Oltrarno guesthouse or small hotel gives you the best value of the three. Drop the bags, splash water on your face, and go straight back out — no nap.

Notes

Book an Oltrarno room with a lift if you can; historic buildings here often mean stairs and heavy keys. Everything on this itinerary is walkable from Santo Spirito, so you never need a car — useful, since much of the historic centre sits inside a restricted-traffic zone.
Golden Hour at Piazza del Duomo: Brunelleschi's Cupola and the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore
Piazza del DuomoGoogle Maps
17:30
75

minutes

Start with the outside, in the softest light of the day. Piazza del Duomo is the city's tourist hub, and at its centre the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore is a spine of green, white and pink marble designed to be read from the square: the polychrome façade is 19th-century, but the body of the church goes back to 1296, and the cupola above it is Brunelleschi's miracle — the largest dome ever raised in brick and stone, built between 1420 and 1436 with no armature and no visible scaffold, using herringbone brickwork and stone chains hidden inside the shell. Inside, Vasari and Zuccari's Last Judgment covers the inside of the dome, one of the largest frescoed surfaces anywhere. Opposite stands the octagonal Baptistery of San Giovanni, older than the cathedral and the place where Dante was baptised; the bronze doors facing you are casts, while Lorenzo Ghiberti's original gilded panels live a few steps away in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. To the right, Giotto's Campanile rises in the same marble scheme. You are not climbing anything tonight — this hour is for scale, detail and photographs while the crowds thin and the marble turns honey-coloured. Save the interiors for tomorrow morning, when the light inside and the queues outside are both better. Nothing here is ticketed, so if your arrival runs late the whole walk simply slides to tomorrow evening.

Notes

No ticket needed for this walk — the piazza, the exterior of the cathedral, the Baptistery doors and the Campanile can all be seen from outside, so treat 17:30 as an aim rather than an appointment. If you arrive later than expected, the same walk works beautifully at any hour after dark, when the façade is lit.
Palazzo Vecchio's Tower, the Signoria's Statues and the Ponte Vecchio at Blue Hour
Piazza della SignoriaGoogle Maps
19:00
90

minutes

Walk a few minutes down Via de' Calzaiuoli and the city opens into Piazza della Signoria, Florence's open-air political theatre for seven centuries. Palazzo Vecchio, the fortified town hall begun in 1299, juts its crenellated tower over the square; tomorrow you will explore its halls, but tonight you simply look up at the tower and at the copy of Michelangelo's David standing where the original once faced the street. Step into the Loggia dei Lanzi beside it, a free outdoor sculpture gallery where Cellini's Perseus holds up the head of Medusa. Then slide down the flank of the Uffizi courtyard to the river, and the Ponte Vecchio appears in the last of the light. The bridge was built in the vicinity of an old Roman ford and crosses the Arno at its narrowest point, and it has been rebuilt many times after floods; above the shop roofs sweeps the Medici's elevated Vasari Corridor, the private passage linking Palazzo Vecchio to Palazzo Pitti. The jewellers' windows glitter after dark, a tradition rooted in the Medici-era rule that reserved this bridge for goldsmiths. This is the romantic hour of your first day — the two of you, a bridge and a river turning copper.

Notes

The Loggia dei Lanzi and the piazza are free and open at all hours; the bridge is busiest between 18:00 and 20:00, so blue hour is both the prettiest and the calmest. Bring a light layer — the Arno wind cools quickly after sunset in April. Like the Duomo walk, this needs no booking, so it can move earlier or later with your arrival.

Suggested restaurant

Piazza Santo SpiritoGoogle Maps

Tuscan trattoria classics

$

Ten minutes' walk from the Ponte Vecchio, Piazza Santo Spirito is where the Oltrarno eats, drinks and argues in the evenings, and its sunset light has made it the neighbourhood's living room for generations. Order like a Florentine tonight: start with crostini toscani, chicken-liver pâté spread on toasted bread, then a bowl of ribollita or pappa al pomodoro — the bread soups born in the Tuscan countryside kitchen — or a plate of tagliatelle al ragù. If you want the ritual main, bistecca alla Fiorentina is sold by weight and easily shared between two people; split one, add roasted potatoes and a glass of Chianti Classico. Around you the trattorie spill onto the square under the plane trees while the façade of Brunelleschi's Santo Spirito church glows at the far end. It fits an arrival day perfectly: no dress code, no rush, and a five-minute walk home. Because Santo Spirito's kitchens change hands and shift their hours with the season and the weather, I have deliberately anchored you to the square itself rather than one door — walk the perimeter, see where the tables are full of Italian, and sit down there.
Florence's historic centre is compact but stony, and the pavement has been polished by six centuries of feet — pack shoes you have already broken in, because it turns slick after rain. The city's public drinking fountains, including the ones near the edges of the Duomo square, run cold, clean water; carry a bottle instead of buying plastic all day. Small bars and market stalls are happiest with cash, while restaurants and shops generally take cards, so keep a few notes for the first evening. Dinner traditionally starts late here — 20:30 is early for Florentines, 19:30 is tourist hour — so if travel has flattened you, eat early and let the piazza fill up around you rather than waiting for it. One habit worth forming tonight because it serves you all trip: churches ask for covered shoulders and knees, so keep a light scarf in your bag at all times. Monday is deliberately given over to open-air squares, a tower, a bridge and a dinner table, so nothing at all depends on a ticket window or a museum's weekly rest day; the indoor visits wait for the days that follow.

Apr 20 | Tue

The Renaissance Core: Dome, Baptistery, Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce and Sunset Above the City
Climbing Brunelleschi's Dome and the Cathedral That Made Florence
Cathedral of Santa Maria del FioreGoogle Maps
08:15
180

minutes

Be at the door for the first slots of the morning. The climb runs some 460 steps between two shells — first the steep inner stair, then the curve between the cupola and its outer skin — and it ends pressed close to Vasari and Zuccari's Last Judgment, painted high inside a dome that engineers of the 1420s were told could not be built. Brunelleschi won the competition by promising to raise it without the traditional wooden armature, and what he left behind is the largest dome ever built in brick and stone. Stand there long enough to trace the herringbone courses and to imagine the stone chains buried in the masonry, the trick that keeps the whole thing from spreading. Back down in the nave, look for the things most visitors walk past: Paolo Uccello's enormous clock face with its hand running anticlockwise, the marble inlay of the floor, the memorials to Dante and to the English mercenary John Hawkwood on horseback. Then take the stairs below floor level into Santa Reparata, the early Christian church the cathedral was built over — an archaeological layer of the city itself, with fragments of old mosaic floor and graves from well over a millennium of use. Book the timed dome slot in advance: the climb is sold only with the Brunelleschi Pass, which also covers the Baptistery, Giotto's Campanile, Santa Reparata and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.

Notes

The climb is tight, warm and physical, with no lift, so it is not for anyone uneasy in narrow spaces or with heart trouble. Morning is the coolest and quietest slot, and the timed dome entry is the part of the complex that sells out first, so reserve it before you travel if you can.
The Baptistery of San Giovanni and Giotto's Campanile
Baptistery of St. JohnGoogle Maps
11:30
75

minutes

Step straight across the piazza into the Baptistery of San Giovanni, an octagon already standing when the cathedral was little more than a plan — one of the oldest buildings in Florence, and the one where generations of Florentine children, Dante among them, were baptised. Look up: the interior is roofed in gold-ground mosaic, a shimmering Christ in Majesty with ranks of angels and apostles, part Byzantine craft and part local muscle. The famous bronze doors tell a two-part story — outside you see the copies, while Lorenzo Ghiberti's original gilded panels, the ones Michelangelo is said to have called fit for the Gates of Paradise, are kept a few steps away in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. Then walk the square to Giotto's Campanile. Giotto began it in 1334 and died before it was finished, and the hexagonal relief panels running around its base narrate human work and invention, from agriculture to weaving to navigation. If the sky turns, this is your perfect rain hour: the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo holds the Ghiberti panels, Donatello's harrowing wooden Mary Magdalene and Michelangelo's late, unfinished Pietà, all under one roof.

Notes

Climbing the Campanile is optional and duplicative if you have already done the dome — the real prize here is the Baptistery interior and the museum next door. Your Brunelleschi Pass covers the Baptistery, the Campanile and the museum for three days, so there is no need to squeeze everything into this morning; check current prices when you book.

Suggested restaurant

il Mercato Centrale FirenzeGoogle Maps

Tuscan market and street food

$

Five minutes' walk from the Duomo, the Mercato Centrale is the iron-and-glass hall raised above the San Lorenzo market in the 1870s, and it is the fastest, cheapest way to eat like a Florentine between two big visits. Downstairs is the working market — butchers, cheesemongers, greengrocers, tripe stalls — where the unbeatable plate is a lampredotto panino: the fourth stomach of the cow, braised with tomato and herbs, chopped onto a crusty roll and dunked in its own cooking broth, with green salsa or a hit of chilli. If offal is not your thing, order a schiacciata flatbread with finocchiona salami and pecorino, or a board of Tuscan cheeses with honey and mostarda, and a glass of Chianti Classico poured at a counter. Upstairs, the first-floor food hall runs later into the evening and is a good fallback if the ground-floor shutters have already come down. Budget around €10–15 each for a very full lunch, and eat standing up like everyone else; it is half the pleasure. One honest caveat: the specific stall days, market hours and individual counters here are the part of this trip my research covered least completely, so treat any particular door as a suggestion and check the day before rather than building the morning around it.
Palazzo Vecchio: The Salone dei Cinquecento and the Medici's Fortified Heart
Palazzo VecchioGoogle Maps
13:30
120

minutes

Back at Piazza della Signoria, step inside the building whose tower has been the city's exclamation mark since 1299. Palazzo Vecchio was the seat of the Priors and the Gonfaloniere, and it still wears its medieval bones — courtyard, deep stone stairs, cramped council rooms — before opening into the Salone dei Cinquecento, the enormous hall built for Savonarola's Great Council of 500 and later refitted by Vasari for Cosimo I de' Medici as pure political theatre. Vasari's ceiling tells the story of Medici Florence in a ring of painted allegories, and in one corner stands Michelangelo's unfinished Genius of Victory, a twisting figure that seems to be escaping its own block of marble. Do not miss the Studiolo of Francesco I, a windowless vault of alchemy and curiosities, or the Sala delle Carte Geografiche with its globes and maps of the known world. Beneath the palace, excavations have revealed the Roman theatre of Florentia, so the city's ancient plan lies literally under your feet. From the terrace you get a rooftop view over the Signoria towards the Arno, and above the building runs the Vasari Corridor, the Medici's private elevated passage to Palazzo Pitti that still threads over the Ponte Vecchio shops you passed on your first evening.

Notes

An early-afternoon slot works well here — morning school groups have gone and the Salone dei Cinquecento is easier to enjoy. Check the day's closing time when you buy, as it shifts seasonally, and note that the tower climb is a separate ticket.
Basilica of Santa Croce: Giotto's Frescoes, Michelangelo's Tomb and Dante's Empty Grave
Basilica of Santa Croce in FlorenceGoogle Maps
15:45
90

minutes

Ten minutes east of the Signoria, Santa Croce is the Franciscan answer to the cathedral: vast, barn-like, begun in 1294 on the edge of the city, and filled with the people who made both the Renaissance and the Risorgimento. Along the right wall, in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels, Giotto's frescoes of the life of St Francis strip away Byzantine flatness and give you figures with weight, gesture and grief — the moment European painting starts to look at real bodies in real space. In the first cloister, Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel is a small, perfect lesson in proportion and grey-and-white stone. Then come the graves: Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, Rossini. Dante's monument stands among them with an empty tomb, because he died in exile at Ravenna in 1321 and never came home, while his imposing statue watches over the square outside. Look too for the leather school tucked into the convent, training bookbinders and leatherworkers on this site for generations. And when you reach the museum, remember the Cimabue crucifix that hung in the nave until the Arno flood of 1966 swept through the church — the water line is a reminder of how close Florence came to losing all of this.

Notes

Buy your ticket at the door or online (last admission is at 17:00, Monday to Saturday), and leave time for the cloisters and the museum — the church alone undersells the visit. Shoulders and knees covered, as in every Florentine church, and voices low, because this is an active place of prayer as much as a monument.
Sunset at Piazzale Michelangelo and the Crypt of San Miniato al Monte
Piazzale MichelangeloGoogle Maps
19:45
75

minutes

Climb out of Santa Croce through the quiet lanes of San Niccolò — roughly twenty-five minutes uphill, gentle but steady — and Florence unfolds beneath you. The terrace was laid out by Giuseppe Poggi in the 1860s, when Florence was briefly the capital of Italy, and its bronze copy of Michelangelo's David points across the river towards the very dome you climbed this morning. In late April the sun sets a little after eight, so arrive with time to spare: the light turns the Arno copper, then the city switches on one square at a time, and this is the moment worth saving for the two of you. A minute further along the hill stands San Miniato al Monte, one of the oldest and most beautiful churches in Florence, its green-and-white marble façade glowing above you. If the doors are open, go down into the eleventh-century crypt, the oldest part of the church, which is held to contain the bones of San Miniato — the martyr who, in legend, picked up his own head and walked up this hill to die. Above the altar the apse mosaic glitters in the half-light.

Notes

Wear shoes with grip for the descent after dark and carry a light layer; the hilltop is breezier than the centre. If clouds roll in, the same walk still works for the city lights — the view does not depend on the sun. Florence's urban bus lines are mapped on the official Autolinee Toscane network map, which was current as of 2026; check it on the day for whichever line suits your evening, and if nothing convenient runs, the walk back down is steady and well lit.
To climb the dome you need the Brunelleschi Pass, which also covers Giotto's Campanile, the Baptistery, Santa Reparata and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo and is valid for three days; the dome slot is timed and compulsory, so book it online before you travel, because it sells out first. Check current prices when you buy. The climb is a long spiral with almost no airflow; it is not suitable for anyone uncomfortable in tight spaces and there is no lift. Every church on today's route asks for covered shoulders and knees, so keep a light scarf in your bag, and keep voices low — several of these buildings are active places of prayer, not galleries. Your must-avoid was the Uffizi and the Accademia on one day, and nothing here breaks it; if you decide to add one of them later, take only one and give it unhurried time rather than a rushed dash between two doors. Comfortable shoes are essential today, since the stretch from the Duomo to Santa Croce and then up to San Niccolò adds up to close to five kilometres of walking, much of it on polished stone.

Apr 21 | Wed

Oltrarno Morning: Pitti, Boboli, a San Frediano Lunch and the Road Home
Palazzo Pitti: The Medici's Hill Palace and the Palatine Gallery
Palazzo PittiGoogle Maps
08:45
150

minutes

Cross the river early and start with the palace that tried to outdo the Medici and then became theirs. Palazzo Pitti was begun in 1458 for the banker Luca Pitti, on a scale its owner could not sustain; by 1549 it belonged to Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I, and the Medici expanded it into the official residence of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany — later the home of the kings of Italy, and today a cluster of museums behind that rusticated stone front, set on the Boboli hill in the Oltrarno. The Palatine Gallery upstairs hangs Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola and Madonna del Granduca alongside Titian, Rubens and Caravaggio, all beneath Pietro da Cortona's overwhelming baroque ceilings in the Planetary Rooms, where every surface is an allegory of Medici virtue. The royal apartments and the Treasury of the Grand Dukes show how the family actually lived, with amber, ivory, pietre dure and semi-precious stone furniture. Check current prices and ticket options, including those that add the Boboli Gardens, on the Uffizi Galleries' official website before you buy.

Notes

Enter from Piazza de' Pitti in the Oltrarno, a ten-minute walk from Santo Spirito. The palace interiors are also your best wet-weather substitute if the garden turns on you, and booking online ahead of a spring morning saves queueing at the door.
The Giardino di Boboli: Amphitheatre, Viottolone and the Terrace View
Boboli GardensGoogle Maps
11:30
90

minutes

Exit the palace into Boboli, the green oasis the Medici carved out of the hill behind it — part garden, part stage set, and the park Florentines still treat as their own. The amphitheatre just behind the palace was cut into the old quarry of the Boboli hill and later furnished with an Egyptian obelisk and a granite basin brought from Rome; above it sits the Neptune pond with Stoldo Lorenzi's bronze god. Then follow the Viottolone, the long cypress avenue that runs down to the Isolotto, a small island ringed with citrus trees and crowned by Giambologna's Oceanus fountain. Or climb instead to the little pavilion on the high terrace for the view back across the palace roofs to the Duomo. April is the garden's loveliest moment: wisteria, irises and the first roses, with fresh green on the holm oaks. There is very little shade in the middle of the day, so carry water and work the slope in this order — up first, then down. And remember that Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, the last of the line, signed a pact in 1737 leaving the family's entire collection to Florence so it could never leave the city; this garden is part of that gift.

Notes

The garden keeps its own rest days and can close for high wind or heavy rain, so confirm opening on the morning if the forecast looks rough. Gates close earlier in shoulder season than in summer, so start before midday rather than after.

Suggested restaurant

Borgo San FredianoGoogle Maps

Tuscan home cooking

$

Come down off the hill into San Frediano, the workshop quarter on the far side of the Oltrarno, where the streets behind Borgo San Frediano still hold artisans' studios with deep old cellars and hidden passages. This is lunch the way the neighbourhood eats it: coccoli — fried dough balls — with stracchino and prosciutto to begin, then tagliatelle al ragù or a bowl of ribollita, or tonno del Chianti, the Tuscan Chianti tuna that is really slow-cooked pork in olive oil. Finish with a small glass of Vin Santo and cantuccini to dip. Nothing here is precious or expensive; expect roughly €20–30 per person for a proper seated meal with wine, which sits comfortably inside a mid-range budget. It also lands perfectly between Palazzo Pitti and the Brancacci Chapel, five to ten minutes' walk from each, so you never lose the afternoon to crossing town. These rooms are small and fill fast, so aim for the edge of the lunch service rather than the peak, and you will walk straight to a table.
Masaccio's Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine
Cappella BrancacciGoogle Maps
14:45
75

minutes

A five-minute walk from San Frediano brings you to the Brancacci Chapel inside Santa Maria del Carmine, and this small room is one of the hinges of Western art. The fresco cycle of the life of St Peter was begun in the 1420s by Masolino and Masaccio, left unfinished, and completed in the 1480s by Filippino Lippi. In the Tribute Money, Christ and the apostles stand on real ground, in real space, with real weather on their faces; in the Expulsion from Eden, Eve's cry is drawn as plainly as pain has ever been painted. Every ambitious Florentine painter afterwards came here to study — Filippino himself, then Michelangelo — which makes the chapel something like the academy of the Renaissance disguised as a side chapel in a working parish church. It survived the fire of 1771 that gutted the rest of the Carmine interior, and its conservation has been obsessive ever since. The chapel has its own entry system separate from the church, with small visitor numbers admitted at a time, so book a slot ahead if you can and give the frescoes the quiet half-hour they deserve.

Notes

Expect a separate small ticket and timed, limited entry rather than a simple church visit — worth arranging the day before. Photography rules inside vary, so ask at the desk.
Brunelleschi's Santo Spirito and a Last Slow Loop of the Oltrarno
Basilica di Santo SpiritoGoogle Maps
16:15
60

minutes

Finish your three days where the neighbourhood lives, on Piazza Santo Spirito, at the door of the basilica Brunelleschi designed at the end of his life and never saw completed. The façade is bare, unrendered stone — the money ran out and nobody ever finished it — which makes the interior all the more startling: a cool grey-and-white geometry of columns running in an unbroken rhythm of semicircular niches around the nave, the last and most serene statement of early Renaissance proportion. One thing to know for this date: the basilica is closed to visitors on Wednesdays, so today you see it from the piazza; for the interior and Giuliano da Sangallo's sacristy, look in on your arrival afternoon if you reach the Oltrarno in time. When you step back out, the piazza is doing what it does all day: children on the church steps, scooters threading past, a couple of old men arguing about football under the trees. Wander back through Via dei Serragli and the side streets of San Frediano, past workshop windows full of leather, gold leaf and hand-marbled paper, and past the cellars and hidden passages that still sit behind those botteghe doors. This is the Oltrarno the guidebooks skim, and it is the Florence most people wish they had found sooner.

Notes

A gentle, low-cost closer to the trip and five minutes from your Oltrarno base. If your departure is early, this is the stop to drop first — Pitti and Boboli carry the real weight of the day.
Departure Transfer to Firenze Santa Maria Novella and the Journey Home
Firenze Santa Maria NovellaGoogle Maps
Keep this last block flexible and build it around your booked train or flight rather than the other way round. From Santo Spirito it is a twenty-five to thirty minute walk to Firenze Santa Maria Novella, or a short taxi ride across the river; if you are flying from Amerigo Vespucci, add the airport transfer on top of the city leg. If your departure is early, cut the day cleanly — Palazzo Pitti and Boboli alone make a fine final morning, and the Brancacci and Santo Spirito stops are the ones to release first. The station has left-luggage facilities if you want one unhurried last walk before collecting your bags. Give yourself a generous cushion: the historic centre is a pedestrian maze wrapped in one-way streets and a restricted-traffic zone, so the final kilometre can take longer by car than it looks on a map. And leave a little room in the case — the Oltrarno's workshops sell things that are genuinely hard to find anywhere else, from hand-bound notebooks to gold-leafed frames.

Notes

No fixed timing on purpose: no journey duration is promised here, because which airport-to-centre services run and how often they run changes with the operator. Confirm the current transfer when you book your ticket, and allow extra time on a midweek afternoon, when traffic around the station thickens.
If you are doing both the palace and the garden, check the ticket options that cover Palazzo Pitti and Boboli together, and remember that the garden keeps its own rest days and can close in high wind or heavy rain, so check on the morning if the sky looks doubtful. Boboli is a hillside: work uphill first and come down through the terraces, and carry water, because April afternoons warm up quickly and shade is scarce. The walk from the garden down into San Frediano takes about ten minutes, and from there everything on this final day sits within a quarter of an hour on foot. Layers matter today — mornings can be genuinely cool while midday is warm enough for shirtsleeves, so wear something you can shed. Keep the light scarf handy for the churches, and remember that Santo Spirito's plain front is not a mistake: the façade was never finished, and that is part of its story. If your train or flight leaves before mid-afternoon, trim the day to Pitti and Boboli and head straight for the station; nothing here is worth missing a connection for.

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Common questions

Is 3 days enough for Florence?

For a first visit, yes: three days cover the Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce and the Oltrarno with Pitti and Boboli at a comfortable pace. You won't see every museum; if you add the Uffizi or the Accademia, give it a morning of its own rather than pairing them.

Do you need to book the Brunelleschi dome in advance?

Yes. The climb is sold with the Brunelleschi Pass, which also covers the Baptistery, Giotto's Campanile, Santa Reparata and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, and the dome needs a timed slot that sells out early in spring. Book it online before you travel.

Which Florence museums are closed on Mondays?

The Uffizi, the Galleria dell'Accademia and Palazzo Pitti close on Mondays, which is why this plan keeps its Monday arrival day for squares, bridges and exteriors. Santa Croce and the Duomo complex stay open, but check each site's hours for your dates.

Plan your own trip to Florence

Start with this itinerary, then choose what you want to keep or change.

Plan your trip on a map, then walk it with an audio guide for almost any place.

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