Florence Tours

Tour Details

• Duration: 4 Hours
• Start time: 9:15am or 2:00pm
• Not available Monday
• Cost: €320 for guide + cost of tickets
• Tickets: Skip the line Accademia tickets cost €20 per adults and €4 for children.

Customisation Options

• Add/substitute wine or food tastings (1 hour)
• Add/substitute a visit to the Opera del Duomo Museum (1 hour)
• Add/substitute a visit to Santa Croce Church or Santa Maria Novella Church (1 hour)
• Add/substitute a visit to the Palazzo Vecchio (1 hour)

Tour description

From the David to the Duomo, Florence’s city center is an open air museum, a testament to the remarkable history of the city and her artists. Whether it’s your first time to the city or you’re a regular visitor, we’ll adapt to your needs and interests, focusing on highlights or off the beaten track treasures. 

Skip the line at the Accademia to see one of the most famous statues in the world: Michelangelo’s David. The political history of Florence and the individual personality of Michelangelo himself are both on display in this statue that has embodied the soul of the city for centuries. 

Then we’ll make our way to the Piazza del Duomo. One of the things that made Florence the center of artistic invention in the Renaissance was her artists and, of course, their rivalries. In the Piazza del Duomo you’ll hear the story of how Michelangelo and Leonardo argued over the block of marble that would become the David and how Brunelleschi and Ghiberti’s numerous clashes led to the creation of two of the greatest works of Renaissance art: Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise on the baptistry and Brunelleschi’s Dome on the cathedral. 

After a possible gelato or coffee break, we’ll visit the medieval district with the square of Dante and ancient tower houses as well as the medieval church of Orsanmichele with her famed statue of Saint George by Donatello. Next we’ll visit the Signoria Square, considered Florence’s open air sculpture garden where you’ll see the original location of Michelangelo’s David and conclude the story of the rise and fall of the Medici family. You’ll finish the tour by strolling to the center of the Ponte Vecchio bridge for a view over the Arno river. 

Tour Details

• Duration: 4 Hours
• Start time: 9:15am (market closed afternoons)
• Note that on Sundays the markets are closed
• Cost: €320 for guide + cost of tastings
• Tastings can cost €10-€30 per person depending on where we decide to go
• Entry tickets: not necessary for city center, additional if we customise this tour to include museums

Tour description

One of our favourite things to do is mix our love of food with our love of art. So we created a tour that does both! 

You’ll dive into Florence’s delectable culinary traditions while enjoying a stroll through a historic covered market and the city center. Tastings can include coffee and pastry, salami and cheese, olive oil and truffle oil, Florentine specialties from the tradition of cucina povera, a glass of prosecco or wine and, of course, gelato!

This tour can include an introduction to Florence’s city center or entry to one of Florence’s main museums like the Uffizi Gallery or the Accademia to see David. Or, we can use this time to visit the Bargello sculpture museum, the Brancacci chapel in the Oltrarno, Santa Croce or Santa Maria Novella. Let us know what you’d be interested in and we can customise this aspect of the tour.

Tour Details

• Duration: 4 Hours
• Start time: 9:15am or 2:00pm
• Not available Sundays
• Cost: €320 for guide, no tickets necessary unless visiting the silk manufacturers

Tour Description

One of the things that makes Florence so unique are the master artisans still working to keep alive a tradition of Florentine craftsmanship made famous since Renaissance times. This tours of the Florence city center includes visits to numerous artisan workshops. We can visit a Florentine mosaic studio, a gold-smith studio where they still make gold jewellery by hand using Renaissance technics, the historic Florentine leather school, the famous Florentine paper marbling, or talk with modern jewellery designers about their craft. Depending on availability, we could schedule a visit to the historic “Florentine Setificio” (silk manufacturers), do a perfume making class or a ceramics class. Let us know your interests when booking and we’ll customize this portion of the tour to you.

Tour Details

• Duration: 3 Hours
• Start time: 9:15am or 2:00pm
• Not available Mondays
• Cost: €240 for guide + cost of tickets
• Tickets: The cost of Uffizi tickets changes during the year. From March-October they are €29 per adult and €4 per children under 18 with ID. From November-February they are €20 per adult, €4 per child). These prices all include the €4 booking fee required to reserve in advance.

Customization Option

• Uffizi By Night: The Uffizi Gallery is also available during select summer nights which is a wonderful time to visit. If you’re visiting during the summer, ask us about these options!
• You can also combine the Uffizi with the Accademia gallery or another museum or the city center or food and wine.

Tour description

Skip the line at the Uffizi Gallery on a tour that delves into the heart of Renaissance art and history. The Medici family built the Uffizi and started the art collection that today has grown into the largest collection of Renaissance paintings in the world. Your private guide will help navigate this vast collection, both in terms of bringing you straight to the highlights but also in understanding the history behind the paintings, their style, their subjects, and the political or religious atmosphere in which they were created.

With each piece laid out in chronological order you can easily follow the changes in society and history as we trace the changes we see in the paintings, making this less a tour about listing names and dates as a starting point to understand some of the great changes going on in Florence and Europe at some of the most exciting times in history. 

Tour Details

• Duration: 4 hours
• Start time: 9:15am or 2:00pm
• Cost: €320 for tour + entry tickets
• Price of the Ticket for the Medici Chapels (€12 per adult, €5 per young adult 18-25 years old, €3 children under 18 with photo ID)
• Palazzo Medici €10 adult, €6 reduced. (closed Wednesday)
• San Marco: €8 per person, Open Tuesday to Saturday in the mornings & open the 2nd and 4th Sunday of each month and the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month.
• San Lorenzo: €9 per person, closed Sundays
• Laurentian Library: €2 per person. Open Monday-Friday mornings (extended afternoon hours Tuesday & Thursday)

Tour description

This tour concentrates on the northern historic center of Florence in the Medici neighbourhood. Depending on the day on which you can do the tour, we’ll visit the Basilica of San Lorenzo and Michelangelo’s Laurentian library, The Medici Prince Chapels, Palazzo Medici & finally the exquisite monk’s cells in St. Mark’s painted by Fra Angelico. It is also possible to add a visit to the Accademia Gallery to see Michelangelo’s David.

The Palazzo Medici was where the richest men in Europe lived in the 15th century. We’ll discuss Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent as well as the artists they patronised: Donatello, Filippo Lippi, Michelangelo and more. We’ll also go into the numerous scandals and assassinations (both attempted and successful) against the Medici family).

Then we’ll visit the San Lorenzo Complex, entering the Basilica to see the masterpiece of architecture by Filippo Brunelleschi and visiting Michelangelo’s Laurentian library.

You’ll also skip the line at the Medici Chapels, perhaps the greatest hidden gem of Florence that contrasts the show-stopping Medici prince chapels of the grand dukes with the artistic majesty of the New Sacristy, known as Michelangelo’s “Essay on architecture.” His statues Day, Night, Dusk and Dawn reveal the transformations of the artist after he sculpted the David.

Lastly we’ll pass by the sculpture garden where Michelangelo met Lorenzo the Magnificent and visit St. Mark’s another hidden gem of Florence containing beautiful frescoes by Fra Angelico, the first public library in Florence and the room of Savonarola.

More than just visiting a number of sites, this tour tells the story of how one family’s history weaves inextricably through the heart of Florentine power, politics and art.

Tour Details

• Duration: 4 hours
• Suggested start time: 9:15am or 2:00pm
• Cost: €320 for tour + entry tickets additional
• Accademia Gallery Tickets: €20 per adult, €4 under 18. Duomo complex ticket: €30 per adult, €12 for 7-14 year old, free 6 and under

Tour Description

This tour will take you in depth into all the sites in Florence’s famed Duomo square.

We’ll skip the line at the Duomo as we discuss the miraculous tale of how Brunelleschi constructed the largest brick dome in the world (and hid his secrets of construction for centuries). There is also the option to climb the dome itself for an incredible view over Florence.

The entry ticket will also allow you access into the baptistry with incredible mosaic work that is said to have inspired Dante himself.

The Opera del Duomo museum is the original site where Michelangelo sculpted the David and now one of the most refreshing and enjoyable museums in the city. See the original golden “Gates of Paradise” from the baptistry, Donatello’s Mary Magdalenerare wooden statue, Michelangelo’s Pieta which was possibly intended for his grave, wooden models for the facade of the duomo and models on how Brunelleschi built the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.

To finish off this tour, we’ll skip the line to see Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia gallery, a statue once destined to adorn the cathedral itself but for whom history had other plans!

Tour Details

• Morning or Afternoon start time
• €240 for a 3 hour tour, entry tickets additional
• Santa Maria Novella entry ticket: €7.50 per person

Tour Description

Discover the Florentine women who shaped the history of one of the most avant garde and cutting edge societies in Europe. We’ll share the stories of the lives of numerous famous Florentine Women from painters like Artemesia Gentileschi and Plautilla Nelli to famous Medici women like Queen Catherine de Medici, Lucrezia Tornabuoni and the last Medici: Anna Maria Louisa. As we walk through Florence we’ll see the sites connected to these women like the house of famed English poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning as well as reimagining some areas, like the Uffizi Gallery courtyard dedicated to the celebration of Florentine men that could include figures such as Margherita Hack, astrophysicst awarded the role of Knight Grand Cross of the Italian Order of Merit. 

Not only will we be delving into the biographies of some of these women, we’ll discuss what daily life was like for women in the medieval and Renaissance times as we cover such diverse subjects as nunneries and brothels (both run ironically run by the Papacy in Florence), tropes of female and male sexuality, how Renaissance women evaded the Florentine fashion police and how the wealthiest and the poorest women would have lived, and what opportunities were open to them – at times far more than history has led us to believe.

We’ll talk about how certain women were glorified or villified like the dichotomy of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen and how stories of powerful women like Judith and Holofernes contrast with the adoration of Beatrice in Dante’s Divine Comedy.

On this walk that takes us through the city center of Florence and the Oltrarno, we’ll pass famous Florentine monuments from the Palazzo Pitti to Santa Maria Novella Church, the Duomo to the medieval district, to the house where the real Mona Lisa probably lived. We’ll begin to see Florence from another female-focused perspective that we hope will eventually be blended with the stories we already tell about this city. History belongs to all genders and our intent on this tour is to highlight the stories of women that will complete that history.

Tour description

• Start time: 9:15am or 2:00pm
• Cost: €80 per hour + tickets (this tour can last 4-6 hours depending on what you decide to visit)
• Entry ticket to Palazzo Pitti: €11 (closed Mondays), Entry ticket to Boboli Gardens: €6

Tour details

The Pitti Palace started as the home of the Pitti family, historic friends turned rivals of the Medici before Cosimo I bought it in the 15th century, turning into the residence of the grand dukes of Tuscany. It then passed to the Hapsburg Lorraine whose extravagant style is still evident in the Royal Apartments. The palace even houses a bathroom made specifically for Napoleon. This palace houses an exceptional collection of Renaissance paintings including the largest group of Raphael paintings in Florence. A visit to the Pitti gives you the sense of how the Grand Dukes and eventually the Kings of Italy lived. A visit to the Boboli Gardens completes our full immersion in Florentine royal style that was copied all over Europe!

Oltrarno is famous for its artisans and we could spend the remainder of the tour jumping from cobblers to paper marblers, leather workers and jewelry designers as we speak to craftsmen about their work before ending the tour with a rooftop aperitivo. Or we could focus on the numerous off the beaten track churches from the Brancacci Chapel to Santo Spirito or climb the hill to San Miniato al Monte for a view over all of Florence. Let us know what you would like to see and we can custom-tailor this tour to your interests.

Tour Details

• Duration: 3 hours
• Start time: 4:15pm
• Not available Sunday
• Cost: €240 for tour + tastings
• Tastings estimated at €35 per person

Uncork Italy

Find out more about our Italian wine newsletter and video series here.

Tour description

On this tour you’ll enjoy a full Italian wine tasting experience with a certified sommelier and licensed tour guide in three charming locations across Florence. This tour is all about “compare and contrast” as you sample two types of wine at each stop and alternate between tasting and strolling across the city as the late afternoon fades to evening.

The first stop on this wine tasting experience will compare two types of Italy’s sparkling wine – the famous prosecco and a classical method “champagne style” sparkling wine from the north of Italy, sipped while overlooking the best hidden rooftop view of the Cathedral of Florence. Stroll through the city center with your guide pointing out a few curiosities and anecdotes that color Florentine history as you make your way to the second stop in the Oltrarno district. 

Tucked into a cozy wine shop decorated with floor to ceiling bottles, you’ll compare two white wines, a fresher light bodied white and a more full bodied varietal, paired with cheeses as you discuss food and wine pairing tips and tricks. After a stroll through the Oltrarno district with a view of the imposing Palazzo Pitti, we’ll end the tour with a comparison of some classic Tuscan reds while enjoying a spectacular view over the Arno river of the Ponte Vecchio.

By the end of this tour you’ll have tried six different Italian wines for a total of 3-4 glasses of wine per person paired at each location with bites to eat, making this a kind of deluxe Italian aperitivo, the traditional drink and snack before dinner.