Palazzo Vecchio: tickets, prices, opening hours and climbing the Arnolfo Tower

There are two Palazzo Vecchio tickets and they overlap: €18 for the museum, €20 for the “Tower and battlements” ticket, which includes the museum as well. On the city council’s official ticket office you pay a €1 presale fee per ticket and choose a date and time slot; on the platforms prices start at €30.50. The museum opens 9:00–19:00 every day except Thursday, when it closes at 14:00: that is the rule that ruins more afternoon visits than any other in the city.

Tickets and prices: what to actually buy

The €12 reduced rate applies to the 18–25 age bracket and to university students. Under-18s go in free, as do visitors with disabilities and their companion, tourist guides and interpreters, journalists and ICOM members. Watch one detail that catches people out: free tickets have to be booked too, and the €1 presale fee applies to them as well if you book online.

The official ticket office is the City of Florence’s own, with technical support from Firenze Smart. Tickets can be cancelled within five working days of purchase; beyond that there is no right of withdrawal and unused tickets are not refunded. The only exceptions are closures decided by the museum. The platforms cost €12–14 more but add an audio guide, cancellation on their own terms and support in your own language: the full price comparison museum by museum is on the Florence tickets page.

Opening hours: Thursday closes at 14:00

The palace is still the seat of the city council, and that produces occasional institutional closures: some days everything shuts, on others only the Hall of the Five Hundred is off limits. The council publishes the monthly list of changes, and it is worth checking the day before if you have a single afternoon to spare. On 25 December the museum is closed and on 1 January it opens in the afternoon, 14:00 to 19:00, with the Arnolfo Tower until 17:00: the council publishes the full picture in its note on civic museum hours during public holidays, which is the page to check around Christmas and New Year.

The advantage over the state museums is that Palazzo Vecchio is open on Mondays, when the Uffizi, the Accademia, the Medici Chapels and the Bargello are shut. It is the right answer to the classic “what do I do in Florence on a Monday”.

Climbing the Arnolfo Tower

The tower is 95 metres high and you climb it on foot: 223 steps inside the tower, 418 steps in total counting the route up from the museum. Children under 6 are not admitted, minors must be accompanied and the route is unsuitable for anyone with reduced mobility; the museum explicitly advises against it for people with heart conditions, asthma or a fear of heights.

Two weather rules to keep in mind. In rain the tower closes and only the sentry walk stays open, with no refund. The same happens during a heat alert, when the Tesoretto, the Saturn terrace and the mezzanine also shut. Book a morning slot: with the sun low the view over the dome and towards Piazzale Michelangelo is sharper, and the queue for the stairs is shorter.

The Hall of the Five Hundred and the battle that isn’t there

The Hall of the Five Hundred is the largest room in Italy built inside a civic palace and it is worth the ticket on its own: walls covered with battles painted by Giorgio Vasari and his workshop, a gilded coffered ceiling, Michelangelo’s Genius of Victory in the middle of the short side.

This is where Leonardo da Vinci began the Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo was supposed to paint the facing wall with the Battle of Cascina: neither was ever finished. Leonardo’s experimental technique degraded quickly and the mural was lost; for decades people have argued over whether a fragment survives behind Vasari’s paintings, and no investigation has settled it. The wall you are looking at is the closest thing to a vanished masterpiece that Florence can show you.

After the hall the route continues into the apartments of Eleonora di Toledo, the Hall of Maps and the Chapel of the Priors. Allow an hour and a half for the museum alone, two and a half if you add the tower.

Secret Passages: ten people at a time

The MUS.E guided visit takes you into the parts of the palace a normal ticket does not open: staircases hidden in the thickness of the walls, service rooms, the structure sitting above the ceiling of the great hall. It costs €8 (€4 for residents of the metropolitan area) on top of the museum ticket, runs 75 minutes and takes a maximum of 10 people per session.

Times are 10:00, 11:30, 14:30 and 16:00 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday; on Thursday only 10:00 and 11:30. You book on the MUS.E phone number, not through the online ticket office: that is why many visitors only discover this activity at the information desk. The languages available are not published on the listing, so ask when you book. The excavations of the ancient Roman theatre under the palace are also a separate visit, and bookable again: it lasts 30 minutes, runs on Sundays at 10:30, 11:15, 12:00 and 12:45 and costs €8 for non-residents and €4 for residents, again on top of the museum ticket.

The guided tours sold by the platforms are a different product: they run one hour or ninety minutes, include a skip-the-line ticket and are held in English. Useful if you are passing through, less so if you are after the hidden rooms.

Free entry, residents and passes

• Domenica Metropolitana: on the first Sunday of the month residents of the metropolitan area enter the civic museums free, with free guided visits on booking.
• Card del Fiorentino: €10 for 365 days, only for people resident in Florence or the metropolitan area, covering every civic museum including the Tower, Forte di Belvedere and Santa Maria Novella. You collect it at the Palazzo Vecchio ticket desk.
• Firenze Card: €85 for 72 hours, accepted here and at more than sixty museums; booking is compulsory but free. It pays off from the fourth major museum onwards, as we show on the page about Florence passes.
• There is no resident discount on the standard ticket: if you live in Florence you pay €18 like everyone else, except on free days.
• Current deals: two tickets for the price of one for Unicoop Firenze members (until 31 December 2026) and a €10 annual card for University of Florence members.

Getting there and practical rules

The palace stands on the east side of Piazza della Signoria; there is a second entrance on via dei Gondi. From Santa Maria Novella station it is about fifteen minutes on foot through via de’ Cerretani and Piazza della Repubblica; from the Uffizi Gallery it is two minutes, which is why the two so often share a full day. Groups can be up to 25 people including the guide.

One last thing about the square: the David in front of the doorway is a copy, and the original is in the Accademia Gallery. Plenty of visitors photograph the copy convinced they have seen the statue, then wonder why there is a queue on via Ricasoli.

Nearby

Within three hundred metres you have the Loggia dei Lanzi with its open-air sculpture, Ponte Vecchio, the Bargello with Donatello’s bronzes and the Galileo Museum. To build a sensible day around these addresses, look at the itineraries on the things to do in Florence page.

Palazzo Vecchio tickets, with or without the Arnolfo Tower, are among the few in Florence you can still buy the day before without risk: book the time slot anyway, check the Thursday hours, and keep an eye on the forecast if the climb is on your list.