The Basilica of Santa Croce also known as the Temple of the Italian Glories, have the tombs of famous Florentines buried inside like artists, writers and scientists, including Michelangelo Buonarroti, Galileo Galilei, Gioachino Rossini, Ugo Foscolo and Leon Battista Alberti.

The largest Franciscan church in the world. is knwon for the notable features in the its sixteen chapels.

Created in 207, the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS) is part of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, with the aim of beeing Florence's international contemporary art centre.


The CCCS is devoted to producing and showing thematic exhibitions, following an interdisciplinary approach linked to the most up to date scientific research on current trends in contemporary culture.

The Chiesa di Orsanmichele or Orsanmichele Church, also known as San Michele in Orto.

Famously known for the sculptures of saints placed in the niches or tabernacles on all four sides of the church by the various guilds of Florence.

Executed between 1340 and 1602, they form a timeline of gothic and renaissance art that is perhaps unrivaled in one location.

You can see the sculptures of St. Stephen and St. Luke .

Just next to the Ponte Vecchio, stands the church of S. Stefano al Ponte, a prestigiouse venue,one of the oldest churches of Florence, including the first reports date back to 1116.

This church is a catholic that have been changing with the pass of the years, like the seventeenth-century remodelation in the interior, creating a highly original architecture of broken lines, without any curve.

Named after art collector Stefano Bardini bought the villa in 1913, the Bardini Gardens

With a Italian Renaissance influence, this garden highlights include a sweeping baroque stairway and an “English woods” planted with native trees (oak, cypress, butcher’s broom).

The 17th-century Villa Bardini itself opened to the public in 2007 with a museum of revolving exhibits from the 400-costume archive of Roman fashion designer Roberto Capucci There’s also a restaurant with a separate entrance (at 6a Costa San Giorgio).

This graceful 14th-century marble loggia, opposite the Battistero, was built for the Misericordia charity and served as a lost-and-found office for children.

Loggia del Bigallo has been a small museum since 1904.

From outside, you can admire the frescoed building, but heading inside will give you a chance to see the much deteriorated but famous fresco of the Madonna della Misericordia, an image of the Virgin Mary with her cape encompassing her devotees.

The Bigallo Madonna is depicted with the oldest known view of Florence, from 1352.

Its two arched bays are richly applied with bas-reliefs of prophets, angels, the Virtues, a Christ giving the benediction and an Ecce Homo.

The interior contains a museum of objects related to the Compagnia del Bigallo.

The Bandini Museum was founded by Canon Bandini in 1795, in the church of Sant'Ansano.

The art collection was left as per Bandini’s legal will to the Chapter of the Duomo of Fiesole “for the benefit and good of the public” as it states in the will. Bandini gathered the works of the so-called ‘primitive’ artists, which was threatened by the ecclesiastical suppression during the Lorena government. The works from the late-middle ages and early Renaissance, which, at the time, were not appreciated for their true artistic value, sparked interest in Bandini mainly for their historic worth and their ability to illustrate the origins of the local culture. After Bandini’s passing, the collection remained in his home, which was located near the San Ansano church. The collection was later moved to the museum in 1913.

Today the Museo Casa Buonarroti is a museum , once a property owned by the sculptor Michelangelo, which he left to his nephew, Lionardo Buonarroti.

The little museum contains frescoes of the artist’s life and two of his most important early works – the serene, bas-relief Madonna of the Stairs and the unfinished Battle of the Centaurs.

The Bargello, also known as the Bargello Palace, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, or Palazzo del Popolo is an art museum.

Nowadays the building detains Italy's most comprehensive collection of Tuscan Renaissance pieces and some of Michelangelo's best early works.

The San Marco Museum (Museo di San Marco) in located in the Convento di San Marco, not far from the Accademia Gallery in Florence Italy (Firenza). The 14th century monastery contains paintings by Fra Angelico, an early Renaissance artist. The church faces Piazza de San Marco in the San Marco District of Florence.
Overall, the building is a monumental complex with all the sobriety and elegance typical of Florentine Renaissancearchitecture.

On the ground floor, the rooms formerly used for community life: the Hospice for the pilgrims next to the entrance, the Chapter Hall, the Washroom, the Refectory and the adjoining room used for the kitchen and other facilities; there is also a small 15th-century cloister, called Chiostro della Spesa, and a courtyard, the so-called Granary Courtyard.

During this same period, the building was endowed with an extraordinary cycle of paintings by Fra Angelico who lived and lived in the monastery in 1387 and 1400-1455.

Previously named Museo di Storia della Scienza, the Museo Galileo, was founded in 1927 by the University of Florence.

This museum is dedicated to Tuscany's men of science, particularly Galileo Galilei, whose telescope, lens and finger are on display.

Is possible to see early thermometers and barometers ,as gadgets and innovations, including a mechanical calculator, from around Europe.

The Stibbert Museum has over 36,000 artifacts, including a vast collection of armour from Eastern and Western civilizations.

The Sala della Cavalcata (Parade Room), where life-sized figures of horses and their riders in all manner of suits of armour from Europe and the Middle East rub shoulders, is particularly great for kids. Other varied exhibits include clothes, furnishings, tapestries and 16th- to 19th-century paintings.

La Specola is the oldest public museum in Europe, having started as the personal collection of the Medici family.

Today the museum spans 34 rooms and contains not only zoological subjects, such as a stuffed hippopotamus, a collection of anatomical waxes, an art developed in Florence in the 17th century for the purpose of teaching medicine.

This collection is very famous worldwide for the incredible accuracy and realism of the details, copied from real corpses. Also in La Specola on display are scientific and medical instruments. Parts of the museum are decorated with frescoes and pietra dura representing some of the principal Italian scientific achievements from the Renaissance to the late 18th century.

The wax anatomical models were a huge hit, and the museum was attended by luminaries such as Goethe (who later wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, a book about wax models) and Emperor Leopold who funded the museum.

Founded in 1588 to support the Florentine art of pietre dure (mosaic-like inlays of marble and semi-precious stones), theO pificio delle Pietre Dure, literally or Workshop of Semi-precious Stones, is a public institute of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage based in Florence

It includes remarkable examples of the craft, from portraits and trompe l’oeil tabletops to panoramic landscapes and functions as a global leader in the field of art restoration and provides teaching as one of two Italian state conservation schools.

Palazzo Gondi was designed by Giuliano da Sangallo an d built in 1490, inspired by other major works of stately buildings in the city, such as Palazzo Medici and Palazzo Strozzi.

Here you can see the courtyard, the salon, the cellar and the historyc apartment

Palazzo Nonfinito is a Florence palace that was never completed and the name tells its incompleteness ("Unfinished").

Since 1869 it hosts the National Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology of Florence.

It contains all sorts of oddments, ranging from ancient crania to arms, boats and other objects from various indigenous peoples around the world. The fusty displays are sorted roughly by regions (Africa, America, Asia, India and Oceania). It is like a stroll through the late 19th century, and there are plenty of curious items, including the hunched-up Peruvian adult and child mummies.

The Palazzo Vecchio or "Old Palace" is the town hall of Florence, Italy. This massive, Romanesque, crenellated fortress-palace is among the most impressive town halls of Tuscany.[1] Overlooking the Piazza della Signoria with its copy of Michelangelo's David statue as well the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi, it is one of the most significant public places in Italy.
It has the appearance of a fortress, topped by a huge open gallery, from which rises the slender tower known as the Arnolfo tower and which repeats in the belfry the design of the top of the palace. The two rows of elegant ogival mullioned windows; this is the only measured proportion to the Palace. It was subsequently enlarged by Vasari, in the sixteenth century and by Buontalenti, in the seventeenth century. Palazzo Vecchio, after having been the seat the seat of the town authorities, became the home of the Medici family.
The first courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio was designed in 1453 by Michelozzo. In the lunettes, high around the courtyard, are crests of the Church and City Guilds. In the center, the porphyry fountain is by Battista del Tadda. The Putto with Dolphin on top of the basin is a copy of the original by Andrea del Verrocchio (1476), now on display on the second floor of the palace. This small statue was originally placed in the garden of the villa of the Medici in Careggi. The water, flowing through the nose of the dolphin, is brought here by pipes from the Boboli Gardens.

In the niche, in front of the fountain, stands Samson and Philistine by Pierino da Vinci.
The frescoes on the walls, representing scenes of the Austrian Habsburg estates, were painted in 1565 by Giorgio Vasari for the wedding celebration of Francesco I de' Medici, the eldest son of Cosimo I de' Medici, and Johanna of Austria, sister of the Emperor Maximilian. The harmoniously proportioned columns, at one time smooth, and untouched, were at the same time richly decorated with gilt stuccoes.
you can just wander through the courtyard and entrances, without paying anything......and it is well worth doing this.