Travel Guide

Places To See

Moyo

This trendy number has a mixed crowd of arty, grungy Florentines, as well as students and a sprinkling of the fashion set quaffing from its tumblers. For cocktail-sipping you can opt to perch on high stools, lounge out the back or sit on outdoor tables. Occasionally you'll strike live music and when the sounds are vinyl-based, the sounds are eclectic.

Alle Murate

A must for visiting foodies, this elegant and discreet restaurant combines the best of contemporary Italian cooking with a monumental wine list featuring labels from throughout Italy and a few from France. Dine under the exquisite medieval frescoes, among them the earliest known portrait of Dante.

Enoteca Pinchiorri

Hallowed turf in Italian gastronomy, this Michelin-starred place occupies an elegant palazzo with a delightful inner courtyard. It's famous for its tiddly portions of astounding contemporary Tuscan fare and a cellar chock-a-block with 80,000 wines. Trust the tasting menus - Tuscan, seasonal and vegetarian - and the suave sommeliers.

Palazzo Vecchio

The 95m-high (312ft) bell tower of the fortress-like, rhomboid-shaped Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace) soars above Piazza della Signoria, another famous Florence emblem. The palace was built by Arnolfo di Cambio between 1298 and 1314 and has been the seat of civic authority ever since.

The interior got its Mannerist makeover from Medici favourite Giorgio Vasari in 1540 when Cosimo I temporarily moved in. Vasari used to boast about how quickly he could churn out art and a bitchy Michelangelo once quipped that his haste showed in the results.

Vasari is largely responsible for the ostentatious decoration in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred), which, although built to house Savonarola's Republican government, was turned into a grandiose expression of Medici power in the 1560s.

The Sala dei Gigli houses the Palazzo's greatest treasure, Donatello's bronze masterpiece Judith and Holofernes (1457), depicting the expressionless biblical heroine about to decapitate a drunken Holofernes, and meant to symbolise Humility's victory over Pride.

When the Medicis were temporarily banished in 1495, Savonarola's government placed it under the Loggia della Signoria (where a copy now stands) with a new base and inscription warning tyrants what they could expect.

Baptistery

The Romanesque Baptistery may have been built as early as the 5th century on the site of a Roman temple. It is one of the oldest buildings in Florence. The present facade dates from about the 11th century. It is said that the eighth side represents the (nonexistent) eighth day of the week, which symbolises birth, death and resurrection all in one.

Most striking are the three sets of bronze doors, conceived as a series of panels in which the story of humanity and the Redemption would be told. The earliest set of doors was completed by Andrea Pisano in 1336. Lorenzo Ghiberti tied with Brunelleschi in a competition in 1401-2 to do the north doors. Brunelleschi was so disgusted that he flounced off to Rome, leaving Ghiberti to toil away for 20 years. Good as his late-Gothic effort was, Ghiberti returned almost immediately to his workshops to turn out the east doors. Made of gilded bronze, they took 28 years to complete. So extraordinary were his exertions that, many years later, Michelangelo stood before the doors and declared them fit to be the Porta del Paradiso (Gate of Paradise), which is how they remain known to this day.

Basilica di Santa Croce

Completed in 1385, this Gothic temple is as much the resting place of a Who's Who of Florentine greats as repository of stunning art. The magnificent facade is a neo-Gothic addition of the 19th century! Deceptive, huh? Michelangelo's tomb here was designed by Vasari. Galileo and the composer Rossini also rest in peace here.

The two chapels nearest the right side of the Cappella Maggiore, belonging to the Bardi and Peruzzi clans, are decorated with partly fragmented frescoes by Giotto. Brunelleschi designed the serene cloisters, dominated by his Cappella de' Pazzi.

Loggia della Signoria

Built by Orcagna in the late 14th century as a platform for public ceremonies, this elegant arcade now serves as an open-air sculpture gallery, with highlights such as Cellini's magnificent bronze Perseo (Perseus). Also known as the Loggia dei Lanzi, the arcade was named after Cosimo I's Swiss mercenaries, the Lances, who were once stationed here.

Duomo

This is the holy centre of Florence and once the site of the town's Roman temple. As the city emerged to become the dominant power in medieval Tuscany, it lavished money and genius on this piazza, a place for Florence to beat its chest proudly and show the world its greatness.

You'll probably have already spotted Brunelleschi's sloping, red-tiled dome from afar, but when you first come upon the Duomo (cathedral) from the crowded streets around the Piazza, you will doubtless be taken aback by the ordered vivacity of its pink, white and green marble facade. Brunelleschi won a public competition to design the enormous dome, the first of its kind since antiquity. Although now severely cracked and under restoration, it remains a remarkable achievement of design.

The great temple's full name is Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore and it is the world's fourth-largest cathedral. It was begun in 1296 by Arnolfo di Cambio and took almost 150 years to complete. It is 153m (502ft) long and 38m (125ft) wide, except the transept, which extends to 90m (295ft). The cathedral it replaced, dedicated to Santa Reparata, fitted into an area extending less than halfway down from the entrance to the transept.

Astor Caffè

This is a place where you could take breakfast, then return some 12 hours later to mix with the nocturnal crowd who gather around for loud music and cocktails, opposite the solemn walls of the cathedral. Keep an eye on the giant red clock so closing time doesn't sneak up on you unannounced.

La Dolce Vita

One of the most popular pre-club hang-outs, this place gets so packed with wealthy wannabes that you might never see the bar. An outdoor terrace helps you forget you're in a car park, although the self-consciously beautiful regulars don't quite make you feel like you're at home.

Antico Noè

It isn't pretty in this arcade but if you want to choose from almost 20 delicious, heaped and filling takeaway sandwiches from this Florentine institution, you'll have to run the gauntlet of the hobos. There's also reasonable food at the comfy cafe next door, where you can enjoy slow jazz and blues tunes with your meal.

Events

Florence's major festivals include the Explosion of the Cart, when a cart full of fireworks is exploded in front of the Duomo (Easter Saturday); and the Feast of St John the Baptist, the patron saint of the city (24 June). The lively Gioco del Calcio Storico, featuring football matches played in 16th-century costume, is held in June in Piazza della Signoria and ends with a fireworks display over Piazzale Michelangelo.

Pre-Departure Information

Electricity

220V

50Hz

Electrical Plugs

European plug with two circular metal pins

Weather Information

Florence's position in a river basin, walled in by hills to the south and the foothills of the Apennines to the north, largely determines its climate. In summer the city is a like a pressure cooker as heat and humidity soar. July is the worst month (closely followed by August) and there are days when there is not a whisper of air. The average highs hover around 31°C (88°F). Occasionally you can enjoy the temporary relief of a cracking good thunderstorm. Winter, on the other hand, is cool and often wet, although mercifully it doesn't last too long. Average temperatures in January range between 1°C (33°F) and 10°C (50°F) and snow is rare.

History and Culture

Pre-20th Centure History

Florence was founded as a colony of the Etruscan city of Fiesole in about 200 BC, later becoming the Roman Florentia, a garrison town controlling the Via Flaminia. In the early 12th century the city became a free comune (township) and by 1138 it was ruled by 12 consuls, assisted by the Council of One Hundred, a bunch of rich merchants. In 1207, due to intractable problems with faction fighting, the council was replaced by a foreign (and thus allegedly unbiased) governor, the podestà.

In the 13th century the pro-papal Guelphs and pro-imperial Ghibellines started a century-long bout of bickering, which resulted in the Guelphs forming their own government in the 1250s. By 1292 Florentine nobles were excluded from government. The city became increasingly democratised, eventually becoming a commercial republic controlled by the Guelph-heavy merchant class.

The great plague of 1348 had halved the city's population. In the latter part of the 14th century the Medicis began consolidating power, eventually becoming bankers to the papacy. Cosimo Medici - patron of artists such as Donatello, Brunelleschi, Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi - became ruler of Florence. Perhaps the most famous Medici was Lorenzo, grandson of Cosimo, who took power in 1469. His court fostered a great development of art, music and poetry, and Lorenzo sponsored philosophers and artists such as Botticelli, da Vinci and Michelangelo.

In 1494 the Medicis went broke and lost their hold on power. The city fell under the control of Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican monk who led a puritanical republic until he fell from public favour and was hanged and burned as a heretic in 1498. The Medicis returned to Florence in the 16th century, having united themselves by marriage with Emperor Charles V, and ruled for the next 200 years. In 1737 the Grand Duchy of Tuscany passed to the House of Lorraine, which was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy in 1860. Florence became capital of the Kingdom and remained so until Rome took over in 1875.

Modern History

The 20th century was in many ways disastrous for Florence. WWI left it spent, shocked and vulnerable to Fascist rhetoric. The city was one of Mussolini's most faithful strongholds. Florence was badly damaged during WWII by the retreating Germans, who blew up all its bridges except the Ponte Vecchio. Devastating floods ravaged the city in 1966, causing inestimable damage to its building and artworks, some of which are still being restored. One good thing to come of the disaster, which left the city covered in a mantle of slimy mud and left countless families homeless, was the evolution of modern restoration techniques. The salvage operation led to the refining of methods which have since saved artworks throughout the world.

Recent History

Florence has rarely hit the headlines in recent times. It leads the quiet dignified life of a regional capital under a constant influx of tourists. In 1993 a car bomb killed five people and damaged works in the Uffizi gallery - this attack was attributed to the Sicilian Mafia. Only in 2005 did relatives of the victims finally get civil proceedings against imprisoned Mafia boss Toto Riina under way. Otherwise Florence has been relatively untouched by sensation. Its streets could almost beguile you into thinking you've walked into a former age, untouched by the clamour of the wider world.