Medici Chapels: tickets, prices, opening hours and Michelangelo's New Sacristy

Medici Chapels tickets cost €11 from 1 February 2026, up from €9: that is the official price of the Musei del Bargello circuit, which together with the Accademia Gallery now forms a single institute, GAMB. Online you start at €17.75 on GetYourGuide and €19 on Tiqets. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday 8:15–18:50, with last admission 40 minutes before closing, and on Mondays it is closed. For what is inside — three Michelangelo sculptures and the grand dukes’ mausoleum — it is one of the best-spent tickets in the city.

Tickets and prices

Booking is optional and the queue here is almost always short: that is this museum’s competitive advantage over the Uffizi and the Accademia. The booking fee is not consistent across the official pages: the Medici Chapels “Tickets” page gives it as €3, while the museum listing on the same site and the 72-hour combined ticket give €4. The amount actually charged appears at checkout on B-Ticket.

Free and reduced entry follow the state museum rules: free under 18, €2 for EU citizens who have turned 18 and are under 26, free for visitors with disabilities and their companion, EU tourist guides, teachers and students of art faculties, ICOM members and registered journalists. On the first Sunday of the month entry is free with no option to book, as it is on 25 April, 2 June and 4 November; on 8 March entry is free for all women.

The official channel is B-Ticket, with the Firenze Musei call centre run by Opera Laboratori. Tiqets and GetYourGuide cost a few euros more and in exchange give you guaranteed slots, an audio-guide app and their own cancellation policies: here the gap in euros is small, far smaller than at the Uffizi.

What to see: Michelangelo’s New Sacristy

The route is short and it climbs in reverse order of importance: first the low, dark crypt with the family burials, then the Chapel of the Princes, the vast octagon lined with marble and hardstones commissioned by the grand dukes as a dynastic mausoleum, and finally the main event.

The New Sacristy is the only space in Florence designed and carved by the same hand: Michelangelo drew the architecture in pietra serena and sculpted the tombs of Lorenzo Duke of Urbino and Giuliano Duke of Nemours. On the two sarcophagi lie the four allegories of time: Dawn and Dusk beneath Lorenzo, Day and Night beneath Giuliano. They are bodies that slide, never in balance, and you should look at them close up and then again from the back of the room, because they change completely. On the third side the Madonna and Child presides over the graves of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano.

Three details most visitors miss: the pietra serena of the pilasters is deliberately bare against the gold of the Chapel of the Princes; the statues of the dukes are not likenesses but ideas of the active man and the thoughtful one; and the windows narrow towards the top to make the sacristy look taller than it is.

Michelangelo’s Secret Room

Below the New Sacristy is a narrow space with walls covered in charcoal drawings attributed to Michelangelo. It is not a visit for everyone, and it is fair to know how it works before you book.

• Ticket €32 full price, €7 reduced: it covers the room, the museum and the compulsory booking.
• Maximum 4 people per time slot, a stay of 15 minutes, for conservation reasons.
• You go down a narrow staircase of 12 steps: not accessible to visitors with reduced mobility.
• Not allowed under 10 or for unaccompanied minors; not advised for anyone with heart problems, claustrophobia or in late pregnancy.

One detail that confuses anyone doing the maths: the official page still breaks the €32 down as €20 for the room + €9 for the museum + €3 booking, that is, with the museum ticket at its price before the rise to €11. The total to pay is still €32, and the EU 18–25 reduced rate is still €7 (€2 + €2 + €3).

Free themed tours, included in the ticket

The museum runs themed visits in Italian, free and without booking: you turn up at the entrance and the group forms on the spot, up to 10 people, for 60 minutes.

On free-entry days the tours are suspended. If your Italian holds up, it is the best way to understand the New Sacristy without paying for a tour: the platforms’ guided tours, in English, start a good deal higher.

Combined tickets: when the Chapels become almost free

The useful sum concerns the 72-hour combined ticket. Six GAMB museums cost €38; the Accademia (€20), the Bargello (€12) and the Medici Chapels (€11) come to €43 on their own. Anyone visiting those three saves €5 and also picks up Palazzo Davanzati and Orsanmichele, which would cost another €18 separately. The 48-hour Accademia + Bargello ticket at €26, on the other hand, does not include the Medici Chapels: that is the most common misreading.

On the platforms the best-selling combo pairs the Chapels with the Accademia Gallery at a 5% discount. It works if you want a single purchase and a guaranteed slot for the David; if you are after straight savings, the official combined tickets are still unbeatable. The full picture of paired offers is on the combined tickets page, while the comparison between city passes is on the Firenze Card and passes page, which covers this museum too.

San Lorenzo, the Laurentian Library and the rest of the complex

The Medici Chapels sit inside the San Lorenzo complex but you go in from the back, on Piazza di Madonna degli Aldobrandini: it is a state museum with its own ticket office. The basilica of San Lorenzo, with Brunelleschi’s Old Sacristy, has a separate ticket run by the parish, and so does the Laurentian Library with Michelangelo’s vestibule and staircase, reached from the cloister. The basilica complex ticket costs €9 and covers the basilica, the Old Sacristy, the cloisters, the Treasury Museum, the crypt and the monumental undercroft; opening hours are Monday–Saturday 10:00–17:30, closed on 1 and 6 January and on 10 August. The Laurentian Library and the Medici Chapels are excluded and need their own tickets.

It is worth planning them together: within a hundred metres there are two Michelangelo interiors and one by Brunelleschi, plus the San Lorenzo market and the Mercato Centrale for lunch.

Getting there, rules and how long it takes

From Santa Maria Novella station it is under ten minutes on foot; from the Duomo five, along via de’ Martelli. The museum is closed on Mondays, so on that day the nearest alternative is Palazzo Vecchio.

The GAMB circuit rules are the same everywhere: no luggage or backpacks over 40×30×18 cm, no selfie sticks, non-folding umbrellas, trekking poles or weapons; only water in small sealed containers; no food. Photography is allowed for personal use without flash and without a tripod. At the Medici Chapels there are lockers that take a €1 coin, returned when you open them again. Groups can be up to 20 people plus one leader, with no booking requirement.

Allow forty minutes to an hour for the visit, an hour and a half with the themed tour. This is the museum to slot in first thing in the morning before an afternoon entry elsewhere, or to fall back on when the Accademia is sold out: the comparison of every price and opening time in the city is on the Florence tickets page.

Nearby

A few minutes away are the Bargello with its Donatellos, Palazzo Medici Riccardi with the Chapel of the Magi, and the Museo de’ Medici. To close the circle on Michelangelo, the David at the Accademia Gallery is a ten-minute walk north.

Medici Chapels tickets remain among the least stressful purchases in Florence: a low official price, a short queue, long opening hours and a combined ticket that repays itself fast. The only booking that is genuinely compulsory is the one for the Secret Room.