Florence · Self-guided audio walk

Duomo to Ponte Vecchio

One straight walk down Florence's main civic street, from the cathedral dome to the goldsmiths' bridge.

5Stops
1 kmDistance
20+ minTime

This walk follows Via dei Calzaiuoli, the straight street that connects Florence's two seats of power: the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria. You enter the cathedral, stop at Orsanmichele, the old grain market that the guilds turned into a church, cross the Uffizi courtyard, and finish on Ponte Vecchio, where goldsmiths now work in shops built for butchers. Allow about 95 minutes at an easy pace.

Hear it on the street

Get the turn-by-turn audio guide in the app. The narration plays itself as you reach each stop, hands-free and offline.

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Stop by stop

The route

Interactive map of the route. The full stop list below works without it.

Must see

Photo by Nicola Pavan on Unsplash

Florence Cathedral

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The city's great church, crowned by Brunelleschi's dome, still the largest masonry vault in the world.

You're standing before Florence Cathedral, the city's great church of Santa Maria del Fiore. The first stone went into the ground on September the eighth, 1296, to a design by Arnolfo di Cambio. The striped green, pink, and white facade you see now is much younger. It was finished in the 1880s, and it followed a Gothic plan the city had debated for centuries.

What makes this building famous is above you. When the masons reached the drum in 1418, nobody knew how to roof a space this wide without wooden supports. Filippo Brunelleschi won the job by promising to do it with no centering at all. He built two nested brick shells and laid the bricks in a herringbone pattern so each course locked itself in place as it rose.

The dome was finished in 1436, and it is still the largest masonry vault in the world. Walk inside. The nave runs 153 meters to the high altar, and the space holds 30,000 people. Look up from the center of the floor and find the ring of windows at the base of the dome.

Brunelleschi's lantern tops it, and Verrocchio's copper ball, added in 1471, catches the afternoon light.

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≈5 min walk to the next stop

Local pick

Photo by louis-garden on Wikimedia Commons

Orsanmichele

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A grain market and granary that Florence's guilds turned into a church, its outer niches lined with saints by Donatello and Ghiberti.

You're looking at Orsanmichele, the oddest building on Via dei Calzaiuoli, and for a while it was the most important one. The name is a squeezed version of orto di San Michele, the garden of Saint Michael that stood here long ago. In 1337 the city replaced it with a stone loggia where grain was sold on the ground floor, and the two upper floors were the city's granary. Look for the slots in the piers where sacks of wheat passed between levels.

Then the grain trade moved out and the guilds moved in. Each of Florence's powerful trades paid for a niche around the outside and filled it with a statue of its patron saint. The originals were by Donatello, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco, and they amount to a sculpture course on four walls. The figures you see are copies.

The real ones are kept upstairs, where the grain once was. Step inside the church if it is open. The tabernacle by Andrea Orcagna, finished in 1359, wraps Bernardo Daddi's painting of the Madonna, and Ghiberti's bronze doors from 1410 still work. A grain store that became a shrine, then a guild church.

That is the whole story of Renaissance Florence in one building.

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≈2 min walk to the next stop

Must see

Photo by Txllxt TxllxT on Wikimedia Commons

Piazza della Signoria

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Florence's political heart, open in front of Palazzo Vecchio and layered over a Roman theatre.

You've reached Piazza della Signoria, the open room where Florence has done its arguing, voting, and punishing for seven hundred years. The fortress facing you is Palazzo Vecchio, begun in 1299 by the same Arnolfo di Cambio who laid out the cathedral, and its tower rises 95 meters above the square. The David standing by the door is a copy. Michelangelo's original stood here until 1873, when it was moved indoors and this replacement took its place.

To your right, the Loggia dei Lanzi holds a collection of stone and bronze bodies under its arches, open all day and free. Beneath your feet is older Florence. The square sits over a Roman theatre that could hold around 10,000 spectators. And not everything that happened here was a celebration.

In 1497 the preacher Savonarola burned books, wigs, and gaming tables in the Bonfire of the Vanities. The next year he was hanged and burned on the same stones. A round marble plaque near the fountain marks that spot, easy to miss among the crowd.

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≈2 min walk to the next stop

Free preview ends here · stops 4 to 5 continue in the app

Uffizi courtyard

Vasari's long colonnade of offices, framed toward the Arno and passed overhead by the Medici corridor.

in app

Ponte Vecchio

The medieval bridge where butchers once worked and goldsmiths still do, shops hanging over the river.

in app

Good to know

Before you go

Do I need tickets for this walk?

The cathedral is free to enter, but the dome climb needs the €30 Brunelleschi Pass with a booked time slot. The rest of the route, including the Uffizi courtyard and Ponte Vecchio, is free to walk.

SourceOpera del Duomo: Brunelleschi Pass

When should I start?

The cathedral opens to visitors at 10:15 AM Monday to Saturday and is closed to visitors on Sundays, so a weekday morning is the cleanest start. If you are climbing the dome, its entry slots begin at 8:15 AM.

SourceOpera del Duomo: opening hours

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