The Medici's last heiress, Anna Maria Luisa, gave away the family's entire art collection on one condition: it must never leave Florence. That centuries-old pact is why the Uffizi holds Botticelli's "Birth of Venus", Leonardo's "Annunciation", and Caravaggio's "Medusa" under one roof. The building itself started in 1560 as offices—*uffizi*—for the Medici's administrators, not as a gallery. Paintings only moved in when the family began filling the upper floor with treasures. It opened to the public in 1769, making it one of the first modern museums in the world.
Audio guide Florence
Tella is a free audio guide for any place on Earth. Here are 30 places in Florence worth a story. Open one on the map and hear it read aloud in English, or take the Android app on a walk and let it narrate whatever you pass.
Places worth a story
Florence Cathedral
13th-century cathedral in Florence, Italy
Brunelleschi won the commission for the dome of Florence Cathedral without ever revealing how he'd build it. The problem had stumped architects for decades: a span of 45 metres, too wide for wooden centering, too heavy for any known technique. His solution was to build two shells, one inside the other, with a herringbone brick pattern that allowed the dome to support itself as it rose. He even designed the ox-hoist that lifted the stones. Completed in 1436, it remains the largest masonry dome ever constructed.
Ponte Vecchio
bridge in Florence, Italy
Hitler visited Florence in 1938, and when it came time to destroy the Arno's bridges during the German retreat, this was the one left standing — supposedly on his orders. Perhaps more than any bridge in Italy, the Ponte Vecchio is famous for the shops that line it. Butchers and tanners worked here first, until the Medici decided they wanted something finer between the Palazzo Pitti and their offices across the river. The grand dukes evicted the tradesmen and installed goldsmiths, whose successors still sell jewelry from the tiny workshops today — a commercial thread running over the Arno for more than four centuries.
Photo: Ingo Mehling · CC BY-SA 4.0
Palazzo Vecchio
palace in Florence, Italy
Michelangelo's David stood guard here for over three and a half centuries, until 1873, when the original was moved to the Accademia. The Palazzo Vecchio has been Florence's town hall since the early fourteenth century, built to house the city's priors behind fortress-thick walls. Inside, the Salone dei Cinquecento stretches fifty-two metres, a hall created for a council of five hundred that never actually gathered under its painted ceiling.
Basilica of Santa Maria Novella
church in Florence, Italy
The first thing to strike you is the façade — white and green marble in sharp geometric patterns, a design so influential it became a model for church fronts across Tuscany. But inside sits a quieter revolution: Masaccio’s Holy Trinity, the first monumental painting to use linear perspective. When it was unveiled around 1427, Florentines thought a hole had been knocked in the wall. The Dominican friars here had spent two centuries building this church, funded by wealthy families who bought chapels inside — and in return, got their names carved into the stone for eternity.
Photo: Armin Kleiner · CC BY-SA 4.0
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana
library in Florence, Italy
Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Richardfabi~commonswiki assumed (based on… · Public domain
National Central Library of Florence
public national library in Florence, Italy
Photo: Gryffindor · CC BY-SA 3.0
piazza della Signoria
square in Florence, Italy
The bronze plaque on the ground, near the Neptune fountain, marks the spot where the fire burned. On 23 May 1498 the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was hanged and burned here with two companions. He had ruled Florence's republic after driving out the Medici, then lost power when the Pope excommunicated him. The stone circle stays bare of flowers most days, but the sign still says exactly what happened in the square that now fills with people waiting for the Uffizi.
Photo: Zolli · CC BY-SA 3.0
Loggia dei Lanzi
building in Florence, Italy
Michelangelo wanted to continue these arches all the way around Piazza della Signoria, but the Loggia dei Lanzi was left as a single open hall facing the square. It was built in the fourteenth century for public ceremonies, yet its name comes later — from the *Lanzichenecchi*, the German mercenary guards of Duke Cosimo I, who were stationed here. Today the three vast arches shelter a permanent open-air sculpture gallery, including Cellini’s bronze *Perseus with the Head of Medusa*. That statue still stands exactly where the duke placed it in 1554, and it is one of the few great Renaissance bronzes never moved from its original site.
Orsanmichele
church and municipal building in Florence, Italy
This is Orsanmichele, a church that began life as a grain market. Florence's guilds each paid for a statue of their patron saint to fill the niches around its outside walls, and the competition drove sculptors to outdo each other. Donatello carved a marble Saint George here, and the bronze Saint Louis of Toulouse became one of the earliest large bronze statues of the Renaissance. Its granary days are why this church stands so unusually tall above street level.
Photo: user:Sailko · CC BY 3.0
Hospital of Innocents
museum and historic building in Florence, Italy
Photo: MenkinAlRire · CC BY-SA 4.0
Santissima Annunziata
Roman Catholic minor basilica in Florence, Italy
Photo: Max_Ryazanov · CC BY-SA 3.0
Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station
railway station in Florence, Italy
Photo: Sailko · CC BY 3.0
National Archaeological Museum
archaeological museum of Florence, Italy
Photo: Sailko · CC BY-SA 3.0
Brancacci Chapel
chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, Italy
Photo: Masaccio · Public domain
Stories are written by an AI from public map and encyclopaedia data and may contain mistakes.