Basilica di Santa Maria Novella
Masaccio's Trinity single-handedly reinvented painted space, and Ghirlandaio's Tornabuoni Chapel is a Renaissance portrait gallery disguised as scripture.
Il Latini
A fourth-generation family trattoria under hanging hams, with one of Florence's best Bistecca Fiorentinas and a 2026 Michelin Bib Gourmand to back it up.
Trattoria Sostanza (Il Troia)
A 150-plus-year-old trattoria built around one nearly impossible-to-replicate dish — butter-fried chicken breast — eaten at shared tables under family photos.
Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella
An 800-year-old working pharmacy in a frescoed Baroque hall — genuinely the oldest continuously operating pharmacy on earth, not a marketing claim.
Chiesa di San Salvatore in Ognissanti
Free entry, real Ghirlandaio and Botticelli, and none of the queue that the basilica two streets over gets.
Museo Novecento
A flood-relief donation turned into Florence's best collection of 20th-century Italian painting, steps from the basilica and almost never crowded.
Museo Marino Marini
One of Florence's few dedicated modern-art spaces, built around Marini's bronze horses, with a genuine Alberti chapel hidden inside the same building.
Museo Salvatore Ferragamo
Ten-thousand-plus pairs of shoes made for a client list running from Judy Garland to Eva Perón, in the medieval basement of the palazzo Ferragamo made his headquarters.
Palazzo Strozzi
Florence's best contemporary and historical blockbuster exhibitions, in a Renaissance banking palace with a courtyard that's free to walk into.
Mercato delle Cascine
The real, unpolished market Florentines actually shop at, and the cheapest prices in the city on everything from leather to lettuce.
Parco delle Cascine
The Medici's actual working farm and hunting ground, now Florence's biggest park and the site of its cheapest weekly market.
Buca Lapi
Florence's oldest restaurant, in business since 1880, built entirely around a chestnut-charcoal-grilled Bistecca Fiorentina sliced tableside.
Procacci 1885
A truffle-sandwich shop that's been doing the exact same thing since 1885, on the most expensive shopping street in Florence, at a fraction of the street's usual prices.
Terrazza del Grand Hotel Minerva
The only spot in the neighborhood to see the basilica's facade from above, with a Negroni in hand at sunset.
Il Bisonte
A 1970s Florentine leather house that never left its original Baroque palazzo, now also home to a newly opened public design archive.