Tickets for Florence museums: prices, opening hours and how to skip the line

There is no single ticket for Florence. The city’s museums belong to three separate circuits, each setting prices, bookings and refunds its own way, and none of them talks to the others. The Uffizi costs €25 if you buy for the same day and €29 with an advance date; the Accademia Gallery €20 plus €4 booking; the Brunelleschi Pass that takes you to the top of the Dome, €30. Working out which circuit a monument belongs to is the quickest way to avoid buying the wrong thing.

The three ticket systems behind Florence museums

State museums. Uffizi, Pitti Palace, Boboli Gardens, Accademia, Bargello, Medici Chapels, Orsanmichele, Palazzo Davanzati, San Marco. Ministry rules apply: under-18s free, €2 reduced for EU citizens aged 18 to 25, free entry on the first Sunday of the month. Watch the two separate sales channels: the Uffizi and Pitti Palace sell through tickets.uffizi.it, while the Accademia and the Bargello Museums use B-Ticket and the Firenze Musei call centre. Uffizi Galleries tickets are personal: if the name does not match your ID, entry is refused with no refund.

The Duomo complex. The Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore is a private board of works and sells only three passes: Brunelleschi €30 (Dome, Bell Tower, Baptistery, Museum, Santa Reparata), Giotto €20 without the Dome, Ghiberti €15 without any climb. They last three calendar days, allow one entry per monument, and are personal. There is no Dome-only ticket, no official skip-the-line, and no refund or date change. Full details on the Florence Duomo page.

Civic museums. Palazzo Vecchio, the Arnolfo Tower, Museo Novecento, the Brancacci Chapel, the Bardini Museum, the Fondazione Salvatore Romano and Forte di Belvedere belong to the city council. They are sold on B-ticket, with a date and time slot and a €1 booking fee per ticket, including on free tickets. Under-18s pay nothing here and the Firenze Card is accepted.

Three rules for staying out of the queue

Book anything that runs on slots. Brunelleschi’s Dome, the Bell Tower, Santa Reparata, the Arnolfo Tower, the Vasari Corridor and the Brancacci Chapel have capped numbers and keep nothing back at the door. For the Dome you get five minutes’ grace on a late arrival: after that the pass is gone. The Brancacci admits ten people at a time for thirty minutes.

Use the right entrance. At the Uffizi the official site sends booked visitors to Door 3, fifteen minutes before their slot. The Dome climb starts at the Porta della Mandorla, on the north side; the Cathedral nave and Santa Reparata are entered through the Porta del Campanile, on the south side. At the Duomo the left-luggage point at Piazza Duomo 38/r is compulsory and free: turn up with a big backpack and you will not get in.

Move your visit to the afternoon. From 16:00 the Uffizi costs €16 for the same day and €20 in advance: it is the strongest price lever in the city, and it frees up the busiest slots too. Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, on the other hand, open only in the afternoon on Sundays.

The weekly closing-day calendar

A third of Florence trips go wrong over this table. Copy it before you decide the order in which to see the city.

Open seven days a week: the Baptistery, the Museo dell’Opera, Palazzo Strozzi, the Museo degli Innocenti and the Leonardo Interactive Museum. The Duomo complex shuts completely only on 25 December, 1 January and Easter Sunday.

Where entry is free

State museums are free for under-18s, and on the first Sunday of every month entry is free for everyone: that covers the Uffizi, Accademia, Pitti, Boboli, Bargello and Medici Chapels, with no high-season exceptions. On those days, though, booking is switched off and priority access is suspended: you queue, and you go early. Entry is also free on 25 April, 2 June and 4 November, and on 8 March for all women.

On that same Sunday, residents of the Metropolitan City get into the civic museums and Palazzo Medici Riccardi free with Domenica Metropolitana. The Museo Galileo and the Leonardo Interactive Museum take part in neither scheme: they are private and you always pay.

No ticket at all is needed for the Cathedral nave (Monday–Saturday 10:15–15:45), the Basilica of Santo Spirito with Michelangelo’s Crucifix, San Miniato al Monte with Gregorian vespers at 18:30, the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, Piazza della Signoria with the Loggia dei Lanzi, the Ponte Vecchio and the terrace at Piazzale Michelangelo.

Official ticket or platform: how to choose

On price the official channel almost always wins. The Uffizi with booking costs €29 on tickets.uffizi.it, the Accademia €24 on B-Ticket, the Brunelleschi Pass €30 with no online fee. Platforms add a mark-up that on some Accademia listings tops 50%, and for the Dome the “premium” products end up at more than double the official pass.

What platforms do solve is two real problems. The first is availability: when the official slot is sold out, Tiqets and GetYourGuide still hold allocations from partner operators. The second is flexibility: official tickets for the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Duomo are neither refundable nor movable, while GetYourGuide normally applies free cancellation up to 24 hours before. Add audio guides, apps in many languages and payment in your own currency.

A practical rule: if your dates are fixed and you are buying weeks ahead, go official and save. If you are deciding at the last minute, if you need to be able to cancel, or if you want everything in one booking, the platform is worth the difference. For the Duomo complex, check one thing only: the Opera publishes its list of authorised resellers, and anyone promising an “official skip-the-line” for the Dome is not on it.

Where to start

With two full days, the order that works is the Uffizi Gallery first thing in the morning, Palazzo Vecchio in the afternoon, the Accademia and David the next day at opening time and the Dome in an evening slot. With three days add Pitti Palace and Boboli and the Medici Chapels, and at that point it pays to compare the cards on Passes and the discounted bundles on Combos. Those six sites are the backbone of most things to do in Florence, and each one is bookable separately.

Every Florence ticket, with official price, online price, opening hours and closing days in a single table, is gathered on Tickets: that is the page to keep open while you book.