The city where the Renaissance was born, the “Mecca of Artists,” and the birthplace of *Stendhal Syndrome, Florence can be described as an open-air museum. Located at the point where the Apennine Mountains end and the Arno River breathes life into it, Florence is a center of art, science, and commerce in the northern part of the Tuscany Region.
For years, Florence has been known for its wine, textiles, leather goods, and art. Today, it has added tourism to its offerings, attracting over 10 million tourists annually. And why wouldn’t it? Here, you will encounter renowned names from history books such as Michelangelo, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Dante, along with their remarkable art and creations.
Florence welcomes you with iconic masterpieces like Michelangelo’s David, Brunelleschi’s Dome of the Duomo, Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, Vasari Corridor, and many more.
Florence is such a place where people of every taste, culture, and education level can find something of their own, spending an entire day without boredom and enjoying it as a tourism city.
It’s a paradise for art enthusiasts, leaving you puzzled about where to start exploring. The Uffizi Gallery, originally built as the “office” of the Medici family and now one of the world’s most important art museums, is among the top choices for art lovers. Works such as Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus,” Caravaggio’s “Medusa” and “Bacchus,” Raphael’s “Madonna del Cardellino,” and Michelangelo’s “Tondo Doni” are just a few of the masterpieces you’ll encounter there.
Just in front of the Uffizi Gallery, Piazza della Signoria is like an open-air museum. From left to right, you’ll see the statue of Cosimo de’ Medici, one of the most famous Medici members, the Neptune Fountain sculpted by Bartolomeo Ammannati, which Michelangelo famously mocked as “ruining beautiful marble,” Donatello’s “Judith and Holofernes” depicting Judith slaying Holofernes to save Jerusalem during the Assyrian siege, a replica of Michelangelo’s famous David statue, the “Hercules and Cacus” sculpture depicting the struggle between Hercules and Cacus in mythology, and the sculpture of “Perseus with the Head of Medusa” by Benvenuto Cellini, one of Florence’s prominent sculptors of the late period, among other exquisite artworks.
With just a few minutes’ walk, you’ll reach the main cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as the Duomo, which is one of the most important domed structures of its time alongside the Pantheon. Despite famous architects of the time such as Arnolfo di Cambio, Giotto, Francesco Talenti, and Giovanni di Lapo Ghini being involved in the construction of this colossal structure dedicated to Virgin Mary, it was Filippo Brunelleschi who put the finishing touch by building the Dome, which had been impossible to construct until then. Just opposite the cathedral stands the Baptistery, considered one of Florence’s oldest buildings. Inside, where Dante, the founder of modern Italian literature with his famous work “Divine Comedy,” was baptized, you embark on a journey through Christian history with mosaic depictions of Jesus Christ and other important saints’ lives. However, what makes this building so significant are the doors crafted by Lorenzo Ghiberti over 50 years of his life. Named the “Gates of Paradise” due to Michelangelo’s remark, “if doors as beautiful as these were opened, they would lead to paradise,” these door wings depict 10 scenes from the Old Testament across 10 different panels. The scenes include: 1-Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and being expelled from Eden, 2-Cain killing Abel, 3-Prophet Noah and his family, 4-Prophet Abraham and the scene of him preparing to sacrifice his son, 5-Prophet Isaac’s sons Esau and Jacob, and Jacob fleeing from his brother, 6-Prophet Joseph revealing the truth to his brothers in Egypt, 7-Prophet Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, 8-Prophet Joshua leading believers to the promised land, 9-Prophet David slaying Goliath, 10-Prophet Solomon and the Queen of Sheba’s love.
If you want to see one of the most important works of the Renaissance, the Galleria dell’Accademia is a good choice. Seeing Michelangelo’s sculpture depicting David’s attack on the monster Goliath between 1501 and 1504, where Michelangelo achieved the golden ratio, is indeed a privilege. Along with this work that proved Michelangelo’s genius (the David statue), you can also see works by many other Renaissance artists depicting scenes from Christianity.
One of the places to visit in Florence is the Santa Croce, where the first case of Stendhal Syndrome, as mentioned at the beginning of the text, occurred. Santa Croce Church, meaning Holy Cross, is actually a Franciscan church. But what’s really important is that inside the “Temple of Italian Glories,” as it’s called, you’ll find the tombs of the most important figures of the Renaissance, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Gentile.
Throughout history, the Arno River, which has given life to Florence, divides the city by passing through it. There are many bridges connecting the city over the river, but the most famous and beautiful is the Ponte Vecchio, meaning “Old Bridge.” This is where the Via Cassia, which goes from Genoa to Rome, crosses the river. The current form of the bridge, which has suffered flood disasters in different periods and has been rebuilt each time, was built in 1345 by Taddeo Gaddi and Neri di Fioravanti. One of the bridge’s notable features is that it’s one of the few “covered bridges” in the world with shops on it. Moreover, the Vasari Corridor, which securely connects the nobles from the Pitti Palace to the Old Palace Palazzo Vecchio in the city without mingling with the crowd, also passes over the bridge. In 1593, the Medici family, using bad smells as an excuse, expelled the butchers from the bridge, and their places were immediately filled by gold traders and jewelers. Gold traders still continue their sales there today. According to legend, when the German armies demolished all the bridges in 1944, they didn’t touch this bridge. In the middle of the bridge, there is a bust of Benvenuto Cellini, who lived between 1500-1571 and was a gold trader, sculptor, technical draftsman, soldier, and musician.
If you cross the Ponte Vecchio and continue south, you’ll reach the Pitti Palace in about 350-400 meters. The palace, built by the Pitti family as a demonstration of power against the Medicis but ironically falling into the hands of the Medicis due to the bankruptcy of the Pitti family before they could even reside in it, has been donated to the Italian people by King Vittorio Emanuele II in 1919. Hosting what is said to be the first fashion show in history, the palace is now an art museum displaying many important collections, and it is one of the most visited places by tourists, along with the Boboli Gardens built for Medici’s wife Eleonora di Toledo, located just behind it.
If all of this doesn’t satisfy you and you’re craving for more art, you can visit Michelangelo’s Chapel for the Medici Family, the San Lorenzo Basilica, the Santa Maria Novella Church located just opposite the Train Station, and the Bargello Museum and the Duomo Museum.
For those who say art nourishes the soul but doesn’t fill the stomach, Florence is an ideal gourmet city. In addition to the locomotives of Italian cuisine like pizza and pasta that you can find anywhere in Italy, you must try the Florentine steak, called “Bistecca alla Fiorentina,” in Florence. Approximately 2 fingers thick and weighing 1000 grams, the steak is served for 2 people. I can say that the steak, unless otherwise stated, is quite ambitious when