Florence Italy: Uffizi, David, Duomo, Ponte Vecchio Renaissance Complete Guide 2026
Browse more guides: Italy travel | Europe destinations Florence Italy: Uffizi, David, Duomo, Ponte Vecchio Renaissance Complete Guide 2026 TL;DR Florence is where the Renaissance happened. I walked into the cathedral square on my first morning and stopped dead. The Duomo's red-tiled dome, finished by Filippo Brunelleschi between 1420 and 1436, was the first dome of that scale built since Roman antiquity, with a 45.5 metre interior diameter and a 91 metre external height. Climbing the 463 narrow steps to the lantern took me about 40 minutes including the wait at the bottleneck near the top, and the rooftop view across terracotta roofs to the Tuscan hills was the single best thing I did in Italy. The historic centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982. Inside roughly one square kilometre you get the Uffizi Gallery (opened 1581 under Cosimo I de' Medici) with Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo's Annunciation, Caravaggio, Michelangelo...