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What to see in Florence on foot
38 sights worth the detour, all walkable, all offline.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Florence offline.
Florence is a city made for walking. This self-guided guide maps 38 of its sights worth the detour — landmarks, historic sites, museums and galleries, parks and gardens and public art — the places locals point to and the tour buses skip, close enough to string into a single day on foot. Download the Florence pack in Voyage GO before you go and the whole route works offline: no roaming, no dead battery from a live map. Every monument, viewpoint and park you pass quietly fills your travel passport.
Landmarks4
- 1Florence Cathedral (Duomo di Firenze)Brunelleschi's dome has been the largest masonry dome ever built since 1436 — and nothing has beaten it.
- 2Ponte VecchioThe only bridge in Florence spared from destruction during World War II — and it has been lined with shops since the Middle Ages.
- 3Stadio Artemio FranchiPier Luigi Nervi's 1931 reinforced-concrete stadium is one of Florence's most significant examples of 20th-century architecture.
- 4Giotto's CampanileA 277-foot tower Giotto started at 67, died before finishing, and designed to look painted rather than built.
Historic Sites20
- 5Palazzo VecchioFlorence's 1299 town hall was built on a Ghibelline rival's rubble — and the battlements were engineered to drop boiling liquid on anyone who showed up uninvited.
- 6Basilica of Santa CroceThe floor holds Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli — Florence's dead are more famous than most cities' living.
- 7Florence BaptisteryDante was baptized in this octagon and spent his entire exile dreaming of returning to claim the laurel crown at that same font — he never did.
- 8Basilica of Santa Maria NovellaTwo paintings here reset Western art — one reinvented the crucifix, the other cracked open linear perspective.
- 9Basilica of San LorenzoEvery major Medici from Cosimo il Vecchio to Cosimo III is buried here — in a church Brunelleschi designed but never saw completed.
- 10Piazza della SignoriaThe square where the Florentine Republic governed — and where the power plays are still carved in marble.
- 11Palazzo StrozziFilippo Strozzi built this to outshine the Medici — he died before it was finished, and they seized it that same year construction finally ended.
- 12Palazzo Medici RiccardiThe building that taught Florence what a Renaissance palace should look like — read its facade from the ground up.
- 13Vasari CorridorA duke so afraid of his own subjects he built a private skyway above the city.
- 14San Miniato al MonteA beheaded Armenian prince allegedly carried his own head up this hill — the church built on that spot has barely changed since 1013.
- 15OrsanmicheleA grain market, granary, and church folded into one Gothic shell — then Florence's guilds hired Donatello and Ghiberti to carve their patron saints across every façade.
- 16Pazzi ChapelA family second only to the Medici in wealth built this during wartime — their claim on Florence, argued in stone and geometry.
- 17Santo SpiritoA 97-meter Renaissance nave on the unfashionable side of the Arno, where Augustinian scholars ran one of the order's most serious academic centers.
- 18Palazzo RucellaiThe 1446 facade that showed Florence how to stack ancient orders on a merchant's house — and made it look inevitable.
- 19Santa Maria del CarmineIn 1425, two painters figured out how to give figures real weight and grief — and the proof is still on the wall.
- 20Basilica della Santissima AnnunziataA friar fell asleep mid-canvas in 1252 and woke to find the painting completed — a church grew around that single claim.
- 21Santa Trinita (Basilica of the Holy Trinity)Cimabue painted his Maestà for this altar — it's at the Uffizi now, but the church that commissioned it is still standing.
- 22Brancacci ChapelA 21-year-old named Masaccio took over this chapel, rewrote the rules of Western painting, and was dead by 27.
- 23Medici ChapelsMichelangelo's first building — designed as a dynastic mausoleum, then abandoned unfinished when he left for Rome.
- 24Arcetri ObservatoryGalileo spent his last decade under house arrest next door — the hill he watched the sky from still does serious astronomy.
Museums & Galleries11
- 25Michelangelo's DavidCarved for a cathedral roofline, then conscripted into politics — a 5.17-metre marble figure that became a republic's defiant face.
- 26Uffizi GalleryGiorgio Vasari built this as government offices in 1560; the Medici moved their art collection upstairs, and the last heiress gave it all to Florence under a formal family pact when the dynasty died out.
- 27Palazzo PittiA banker's act of one-upmanship that the Medici, Napoleon, and Italian kings all ended up calling home.
- 28Bargello National MuseumItaly's deepest Renaissance sculpture collection, in a building where the city once held public executions.
- 29Galleria dell'AccademiaThe original David has stood in this room since 1873 — the marble Michelangelo carved, not a reproduction.
- 30Hospital of Innocents (Ospedale degli Innocenti)The building that invented Renaissance proportion — each bay is a perfect cube, and you can see it with your own eyes.
- 31National Archaeological MuseumA bronze lion-goat-serpent pulled from Arezzo soil in 1553 — the Chimera now anchors Florence's Etruscan collection.
- 32Museum of San MarcoFra Angelico painted these walls while living here as a monk — the art never left the building it was made for.
- 33Museo dell'Opera del DuomoMost original sculptures from the Duomo, campanile, and Baptistery are in here — replaced outside by replicas.
- 34Casa BuonarrotiMichelangelo bought this corner property in 1508 and barely lived here — what remains are his two earliest marble carvings and his own handwriting.
- 35Museo GalileoThe Medici collected paintings and scientific instruments with equal seriousness — this is where the instruments survived.
Parks & Gardens1
- 36Boboli GardensThe private pleasure garden of the Medici grand dukes — built on a grand scale, yet never once opened to a guest or used for a party.
Public Art2
- 37Loggia dei LanziMichelangelo admired these arches so much he lobbied to wrap them around the entire Piazza della Signoria.
- 38Perseus with the Head of MedusaCellini hid his own face on the back of the helmet — a self-portrait in plain sight for 500 years.
