The 9 best museums in Florence

Any introductory walk around Florence reveals a treasure chest of masterpieces. Indeed, Italy’s great Renaissance city is a sort of giant outdoor museum in itself.

Yet what museums this great city contains! Beyond Florence’s crowded piazze and gelaterie, great galleries beckon – havens where you can seek out peace, quiet contemplation and mind-blowing masterpieces.

Read on for our picks of the best museums in Florence.

1. Galleria degli Uffizi

Best museum for Renaissance art

You simply can’t visit Florence and skip the Galleria degli Uffizi. Taking in the vibe in the elongated courtyard by the entrance – where buskers, mime artists, singers and selfie-stick-wielding tourists jostle for space – is as much part of the experience as getting lost in the gargantuan 16th-century palace’s maze of 100-odd rooms.

Anyone with even a passing interest in art will swoon at the Uffizi’s collection, which displays pieces from ancient Greece through 18th-century Venice. The highlight here is the unique density of works by Renaissance masters, from Giotto to Botticelli to Raphael to many, many more.

Even those who don’t adore Renaissance art will love Uffizi features like the Tribune, a grand gallery encrusted with 5780 mother-of-pearl pieces sourced from the Indian Ocean, or the Math Room, where Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici stashed war-machine models, maps and other innovative tech of the day.

Planning tip: Arrive 15 minutes before your booked entry time to pick up your paper ticket at the ticket office, then cross Piazzale degli Uffizi to access the museum. While you could spend the whole day here (or many days), budget 2 to 3 hours to take in the scope of the institution.

2. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo

Best museum to learn about Florence’s iconic cathedral

Florence’s world-famous cathedral complex comprises the Duomo, with Brunelleschi’s flame-red cupola (don’t miss the climb up inside); the standalone campanile (bell tower); and baptistery. The Museo dell’Opera del Duomo tells the full story of this inspiring architectural masterpiece through a collection of priceless sacred and liturgical treasures. This is as much a showcase of extraordinary Florentine craftsmanship as it is a history lesson.

A spectacular life-sized reconstruction of the cathedral’s original facade, ripped down in the 16th century, looms large in the museum’s main hall. The restored, 14th- and 15th-century gilded-bronze doors from the baptistery, carved in mind-blowing detail to illustrate biblical tales, are breathtaking. Another highlight is Michelangelo’s powerfully emotive Pietà Bandini, sculpted when he was almost 80 and intended for his own tomb.

Planning tip: After visiting the cathedral and museum, you should admire the work of art that is the Duomo from afar. Top vantage points include the glorious terrace of Piazzale Michelangelo, the gardens of Villa Bardini and the lesser-known Orti del Parnaso.

3. Museo Volloresi

Best museum for engaging the senses

Adding a heady note to any museum day, the Museo Villoresi explores the world of artisanal perfumery with interactive digital exhibits, olfactory booths, short films and a scent library. Intimate tours (book in advance online) end in a gloriously sweet-smelling terrace garden where 80 different types of aromatic plants, trees and herbs grow – think lemons, bergamot, yuzu, roses, jasmine, frangipane, laurel, olive, cypress and iris. The museum is at home in the 15th-century family palazzo (mansion) of revered Florentine perfumer Lorenzo Villoresi, whose bespoke fragrances evoke the Tuscan countryside, garden and seaside. 

Planning tip: To smell orange blossom, citrus, green laurel and bergamot long after you’ve left Florence, buy a vintage-styled glass vaporizer in the adjoining boutique. Can’t pick which scent? Go for an inspired “discovery set” containing four or six 2mL vials.

4. Palazzo Strozzi

Best museum for families

Whether you have art-curious kids or not, the attention-grabbing contemporary art at the Renaissance Palazzo Strozzi captures everyone’s interest. Themed hands-on workshops and tours aimed squarely at families accompany each blockbuster exhibition. Immersive games, activities and imaginative narratives plunge families into, for example, the world of Jeff Koons, contemporary French artist JR...all sorts. Two or three exhibitions usually run simultaneously.

Planning tip: Strozzi’s 15th-century interior courtyard is a buzzy place to linger with locals. Beneath its arches, Strozzi Bistrò is an elegant spot for coffee (try the iced cappuccino), Tuscan wine and cocktail-fueled aperitivi (pre-dinner drinks).

5. Manifattura Tabacchi

Best contemporary-arts space 

Convention flies out the window at this contemporary-arts center, an ongoing urban regeneration project inside a 1930s tobacco-processing plant and cigarette factory near Florence’s largest park. The provocative art, fashion and design exhibitions held in this former industrial complex and vibrant new district offer a brilliant contrast to the classic cultural fare in Florence’s centro historico.

Of the dozen-plus spaces already restored, the Factory is the central hub. Here, you can partake of art exhibitions, crafts workshops led by resident creatives, weekly yoga classes, vintage markets, pop-up coffee shops, the tattoo artists of Noa Ink and more. Leave Florence’s trademark crowds well behind in the Officina Botanica hanging rooftop garden.

Local tip: Architecture buffs will love that the complex is a sensational example of Italian Rationalist architecture. Free guided tours of Le Caveau take you deep inside the former factory, revealing its history and heritage.

6. Galleria dell’Accademia

Best museum for a celebrity nude

It appears that standing in line for a very long time is one of the top things to do in Florence – for a queue halfway down the street invariably marks the entrance to Galleria dell’Accademia, a gallery purpose-built in 1784 to house the world’s most famous nude. And he’s worth the wait.

Michelangelo sculpted David from a single block of marble from 1501–04, and the subtle details – the veins in his sinewy arms, the leg muscles, the change in expression as you pace around the statue – are impossibly bewitching.

Close up, there is no denying the incongruity of the the nude boy-warrior’s large head and hands, and small penis. The 5.2m-tall sculpture was originally intended to reside up high on a buttress in a cathedra’s apse, from where his head and hands would have appeared in perfect proportion. Why the small penis? In classical art a large or even normal-sized packet was deemed inelegant. The Accademia also displays Michelangelo’s unfinished Prigioni (Prisoners; 1519–34), other nudes worth contemplation.

Planning tips: It’s best to book your tickets months in advance during peak season via the official website. The reservation fee is €4; tickets can be collected at the office in front of the museum’s entrance in Via Ricasoli. Even with a timed ticket, expect queues  during the high season.

7. Museo delle Cappelle Medicee

Best museum for Medici treasures

For seriously glitzy razzle-dazzle, hit the Medici Chapels Museum, the burial site of the Medici dynasty since 1429. It’s hard not to ogle in disbelief at the conceited riot of polychrome marbles, granite and glittering semiprecious stones adorning the funerary tombs in the mausoleum and crypts. No fewer than 49 dynasty members are buried here, a trio of whom slumber in the shadow of haunting, voluptuous funerary sculptures depicting Dawn and Dusk, Night and Day and Madonna and Child, all by Michelangelo.

Planning tip: Save euros by investing in the 72-hour combo ticket, which covers entry to the Cappelle Medicee, Museo del Bargello, Museo di Palazzo Davanzati, Casa Martelli and unusual church-turned-grain market Chiesa e Museo di Orsanmichele.

8. La Specola

Best museum for riveting curiosities

The faithful and rather ghoulish wax reproductions of various human organs and body parts at La Specola won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But for those who can stomach an unskinned corpse or wax lung in bad health, this section of Florence’s natural history museum shows how art and science combined in the 18th and 19th centuries. Waxworks were made from beeswax, dyed various shades of amber with gold powder, and used to teach young doctors.

To ensure no nasty surprises, you can only admire the anatomical models on a guided tour. Otherwise, you can freely meander hall after hall bursting with wooden cabinets of glittering topaz crystals and precious minerals, exquisite wax models of fruits and plants, stuffed exotic animals that once entertained the Medici family (look for Cosimo III’s pet hippo)... The waxwork artistry alone is incredible.

Planning tip: On Sunday, an additional €3 gets you access to the Astronomical Tower and Galileo’s Tribune.

9. Museo degli Innocenti

Best museum for Renaissance architecture

It’s impossible for your curiosity not to be piqued by the shiny sky-blue, glazed-terracotta medallions of swaddled babies peppering the facade of Florence’s former Ospedale degli Innocenti. With round arches and Roman capitals, this Brunelleschi-designed structure from 1421 is the first true Renaissance building in Florence. Inside, state-of-the-art museum exhibits bring to life the moving tale of Florence’s foundling hospital – and later Europe’s first orphanage – where unwanted children were cared for from 1421 until 1875.

Local tip: End with coffee or aperitivo as the sun turns the city pink on the gorgeous wraparound panoramic terrace of rooftop museum cafe Caffè del Verone. Washed linen used to hang to dry on the clandestine deck, once the hospital’s verone (drying room).