The short list
⛔ The dome climb needs a timed slot and it is the one that goes furthest ahead. Book it first, before flights are locked to particular days if you can.
⚠️ The Uffizi and the Accademia need reserving in season. Out of season you can often walk up, but a wasted morning is worth more than the booking fee.
⚠️ The Brancacci Chapel caps numbers and is frequently timed — it is a small room with fragile frescoes.
Almost everything else in this city can be walked into.
How the queues actually work
⛔ The most common misunderstanding: at the Uffizi and Accademia, a ticket is not a place in the entry line. There is a queue to collect or scan, and a queue to go through security. 'Skip the line' is often just a standard entry sold at a markup.
⚠️ People do queue on the day at the Accademia and are turned away — it has a hard daily cap.
⭐ The cathedral's own queue is free and moves fast, and it is a different queue from every paid part of the complex.
Where to buy
The safest route is always the operator's own site — the Opera del Duomo for the cathedral complex, and the official ticketing for the state museums. Resellers are legitimate and convenient, but they are also where the marked-up 'skip the line' products live.
⛔ This site does not quote prices. Admissions, passes and their contents change every season and a figure written here would be wrong before you read it.
Booking the practical bits
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It does not affect what is recommended here, and no sight page on this site carries one.
The two timed tickets are the whole problem here and this site does not sell them. What it can point you at is the friction either side: somewhere to leave a bag on the day of an Uffizi slot — you cannot take a large one in — and the ride in from Peretola or Pisa.
Brunelleschi's Dome
The Uffizi
The Accademia
The Brancacci Chapel
Palazzo Vecchio