San Marco Museum Florence: tickets, prices, opening hours and what to see

Museo di San Marco tickets cost €11 at the ticket desk on Piazza San Marco 3; on the platforms prices start at €16 with an audio guide at the time of checking, and the hours are 8:30–13:50 Tuesday to Sunday with last entry at 12:45. This is the convent where Fra Angelico frescoed one cell after another, it is two hundred metres from the queue outside the Accademia Gallery, and it is, in all likelihood, the emptiest great museum in Florence.

One note of transparency about this page: the ministry site museitoscana.cultura.gov.it is still unreachable, and the price and hours above come from the official listing archived on 11 September 2026. The €11 figure and the 8:30–13:50 hours match the information sheets in circulation, but the B-Ticket sales channel still shows an €8 ticket and a different calendar — Tuesday to Saturday plus the first and third Sunday and the second and fourth Monday of the month. Before you go, one phone call to +39 055 0882000 is worth more than any page.

Tickets and prices

San Marco is not part of the GAMB group that brings together the Accademia, the Bargello, the Medici Chapels and Palazzo Davanzati: it comes under the Direzione regionale Musei nazionali Toscana. In practice: it is not covered by that circuit’s €26 and €38 combined tickets, and its ticket is bought separately.

The standard state-museum exemptions apply: people with disabilities and one companion, licensed EU tour guides and interpreters, teachers and students of art history, architecture and conservation faculties, Ministry staff, ICOM members and registered journalists.

On the booking fee the official listing publishes no figure at all; the B-Ticket page for San Marco says €3.00, but it is the same page that still shows an €8 ticket, so treat it with caution. Since booking here is almost never necessary, it is a theoretical problem.

Free Sunday

As a state museum, San Marco falls by law under #domenicalmuseo, the free admission on the first Sunday of every month at all state museums, with no high-season exceptions. The museum’s own listing, however, does not include it among the published information: it is a consequence of the ministerial decree, not an initiative announced by the museum, and with the ministry site offline there is no way to read direct confirmation. On free-admission days the booking service is not active.

Opening hours: this is a morning-only museum

This is the piece of information that separates a good visit from a wasted trip.

The bookshop closes at 13:30, twenty minutes before the museum. And then there is the rule that catches everyone out: on the fifth Sunday of the month the museum is closed. It happens four or five times a year, in the months with five Sundays, and it is written nowhere by the door. If your only free day is a Sunday, count the numbers on the calendar before crossing the city.

Annual closures: 1 January and 25 December.

How to book (spoiler: you don’t need to)

The booking office answers on the freephone number 800 615 615 every day from 8:00 to 19:00, and on +39 055 0354135 from abroad. It is mainly there for groups.

For everyone else, the truth is that at San Marco you arrive and you walk in. There is none of the queue you see on Via Ricasoli outside the Accademia, two minutes away, and no sold-out slots as at the Uffizi. Buying online through a platform costs a few euros more and gives you the audio guide in an app plus cancellation: that is convenience, not time saved.

The practical advice here is different, and it is about the clock. Go in at opening, at 8:30: the dormitory in early morning light is worth the alarm, and in any case the doors close to new arrivals at 12:45.

What to see: a 90-minute route

The Annunciation at the top of the stairs

You climb the dormitory staircase and there it is, on the wall facing you, painted at exactly the eye level of whoever reaches the top: Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, with its loggia, its enclosed garden and the two figures leaning towards each other. It is not hung, it is part of the wall: it was conceived for that spot and for the friars climbing up to pray, not for a museum.

The dormitory cells

The upper corridor has dozens of cells, and almost every one has its own fresco, painted by Fra Angelico and his workshop to support the individual friar’s meditation. These are not decorative scenes: they are pared back to essentials, with few figures, pale colours and no superfluous detail. Take the time to step into one cell at a time instead of walking the corridor: that is the way the place was built to be used.

Savonarola

At the end of the corridor are the rooms that belonged to Girolamo Savonarola, prior of the convent, the friar who preached against Medici luxury, organised the bonfire of the vanities, governed Florence and ended up burned in Piazza della Signoria. Objects, portraits and records of his trial are kept here. It is the contrast that makes San Marco a strange and beautiful museum: Angelico’s sweetness and the preacher’s fury in the same corridor.

Michelozzo’s Library

The room Michelozzo designed for Cosimo de’ Medici is considered the first public library in modern Europe: three aisles, slender columns, light vaults, an even light meant for reading. It currently houses the exhibition “La Biblioteca svelata: il bestiario fantastico”, on until 31 October 2026 with the normal museum ticket: the convent’s illuminated choir books, with their impossible animals in the initials.

Last spring and until 23 August 2026 the Library also hosted a special section of “Rothko in Florence”, with five works in dialogue with Fra Angelico: that part has ended, and the main exhibition was at Palazzo Strozzi.

The ground floor and the Last Supper

On the ground floor are the Cloister of Sant’Antonino, the Pilgrims’ Hospice with Angelico’s panels — among them the San Marco Altarpiece and the Last Judgement — the Chapter House with its great Crucifixion, and the Last Supper frescoed by Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Getting there and how to fit it around the Accademia

Piazza San Marco is north of the centre: ten minutes on foot from the Duomo along Via Cavour, fifteen from Santa Maria Novella station. Several city bus lines cross the square, and many intercity buses terminate there.

The natural pairing is with the Accademia Gallery: two hundred metres along Via Ricasoli, a five-minute walk. The order matters, though, because the opening hours do not overlap.

Doing it the other way round is the classic mistake: you come out of the Accademia at half past one and find San Marco has already stopped letting people in.

Rules and services

The usual rules of Florence’s state museums apply: no bulky bags or backpacks, photographs for personal use without flash or tripod, no food or drink in the rooms. If you arrive with a suitcase, leave it at a luggage storage point before walking up to the square.

Nearby

• Accademia Gallery: Michelangelo’s David, two hundred metres away.
• Medici Chapels: the New Sacristy, ten minutes towards San Lorenzo.
• Bargello: Donatello’s two Davids, the other half-empty museum in the centre.
• Palazzo Strozzi: the city’s big temporary exhibitions.
• Florence’s other museums: Palazzo Medici Riccardi and the Museo degli Innocenti, both in the area.

The bottom line

San Marco Museum tickets cost €11 official and cover an entire convent frescoed by Fra Angelico, the first public library in Europe and Savonarola’s rooms, with no queues and no slots to fight for. The only difficulty is the clock: you must be in by 12:45, it closes at 13:50, and on the fifth Sunday of the month it does not open at all. Put it early in the morning, before the Accademia, and you will have the best-spent half day of the whole trip.