Up the Hill

The climb everyone does, and the one they should

Piazzale Michelangelo is the postcard: the whole city, the river and the bridges in one frame, with a bronze David and a great many other people. It is a nineteenth-century viewing terrace and it does exactly what it was built to do.

⚠️ Almost everybody stops there and turns round. San Miniato al Monte is five minutes further up — older, emptier, free, and the most beautiful church in Florence. The monks sing in the crypt in the late afternoon.

⭐ Keep climbing. That is the entire advice.

The other rims

Giardino Bardini gives you the dome straight on across the rooftops with a parapet to lean on, and a fraction of the crowd. Boboli climbs too, and you are inside a garden while you look.

Fiesole is the big one — three hundred metres up, a city bus away on an ordinary urban ticket, with the whole valley below.

Bellosguardo, west and above the Oltrarno, is the quietest of them and almost never busy.

When to go

⭐ Late afternoon, every time. The light comes from the west and lands on the front of the dome and the campanile.

⚠️ Sunset at Piazzale Michelangelo is genuinely crowded. The trade-off is real, because the light genuinely is best then — so either accept the crowd or go to Bardini or Fiesole instead.

You can walk up through the Rose Garden from the Oltrarno, which is prettier than the road, or take a bus if the hill is not appealing.

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