Florence Audio Tours

Florence made most of Western art between roughly 1420 and 1550, and the buildings, paintings, and sculptures produced in those 130 years still fill the city so completely that it requires a kind of discipline to notice anything made after 1600. Brunelleschi's dome on the Duomo, completed in 1436 without the use of a supporting framework, was the largest dome built since the Pantheon in Rome and is still the largest brick dome ever constructed. It sits above the roofline of the entire city and is visible from every direction, which Brunelleschi intended as a statement about what Florence could do when it chose to concentrate.

The Uffizi Gallery holds a collection that would take a week to see properly, which is why most people spend two hours there and leave with Botticelli's Birth of Venus as a memory.

The Galleria dell'Accademia, ten minutes' walk away, contains Michelangelo's David, which is always larger than photographs suggest: 5.17 metres of marble carved from 1501 to 1504, the light falling on it from specifically positioned skylights. Both galleries require advance booking at almost any time of year. The Ponte Vecchio over the Arno, covered with jewellers' shops since the Medici evicted the butchers and tanners in 1593, connects the Uffizi side to the Pitti Palace on the Oltrarno bank.