Oltrarno Neighbourhood
Cross any bridge to the south bank of the Arno and you step into a Florence that moves at a different pace — narrower streets, fewer tour groups, workshops where craftspeople still hand-bind books, restore gilded frames and hammer silver. The Oltrarno is where Florentines actually live, and it rewards slow, aimless walking.
Artisan Workshops and Quiet Piazzas
Via Maggio and the streets radiating from it are lined with antique dealers and restoration workshops, many of which welcome curious visitors. Look into open doorways and you may find a gilder applying gold leaf to a 17th-century frame or a cobbler hand-stitching leather shoes using techniques unchanged for generations.
Piazza Santo Spirito is the neighbourhood's living room: a broad, slightly scruffy square anchored by Brunelleschi's unfinished church facade, ringed with bars and occupied most mornings by a small organic produce market. Sit at one of the outdoor tables at Caffè Ricchi or Bar Borgo Antico and watch the neighbourhood move around you.
Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens
The Palazzo Pitti, the vast Renaissance pile that the Medici bought from the Pitti family in 1549, dominates the neighbourhood. Its six museums include the Palatine Gallery (Raphael and Titian masterworks in situ in frescoed rooms, uncrowded compared to the Uffizi) and the Costume Museum — both worth a morning.
Behind the palace, the Boboli Gardens are a 45-hectare terraced landscape of fountains, grottos, statues and cypress allées climbing the hillside toward Forte Belvedere. The amphitheatre at the garden's centre was the site of the world's first public opera performance in 1637. A combined Pitti Palace and Boboli ticket costs around €22.
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