Florence vs Venice: how to choose between two Italian icons

07.03.2024 - 00:49 / lonelyplanet.com

Only got time for one beautiful Italian city? 

Home to some of the world's greatest art, architecture and food, it can be incredibly hard to choose where to spend your time in Italy. How does anyone decide between Florence, the Cradle of the Renaissance, and Venice, a city of marble palaces floating on a lagoon?

Should you be the unlucky soul that needs to make that decision, our Lonely Planet writers are here to help, each putting forward their case for why their favorite city should be your top choice too.

Lonely Planet Italy expert for two decades, Nicola Williams has just finished writing the new edition of Lonely Planet’s Pocket Florence & Tuscany guidebook, out in September 2024.

Let’s cut to the chase. Maybe I should be encouraging you to head elsewhere given the near-permanent crowd that fills Florence to bursting. In 2023 the number of visitors at the Uffizi hit yet another new, all-time high of 5 million (smashing the previous record of 4.3 million in 2019). But gorge on 6000 mother-of-pearl shells encrusting the ceiling of the Medici’s sumptuous treasure-chest Tribune, two rooms of Botticelli masterpieces and the world’s largest collection of Italian Renaissance art, and it’s easy to understand why. The artistic beauty and sensorial thrill of Florence is intense, soul-stirring and thrillingly sublime: think goosepimple stuff that everyone should experience at least once.

What makes the Tuscan capital extra special is its Dolby surround of Renaissance wonder. Imagine a place where allegorical statues of the Four Seasons dating to 1608 nonchalantly stand sentry on one of the bridges across the Arno; where Giambologna’s powerful Rape of the Sabine Women (1582) kicks you in the gut in an open-air loggia on historic main square Piazza della Signoria; where utterly heavenly medallions of swaddled babes by Andrea della Robbia (1435–1525) adorn the facade of an old orphanage-turned-museum in the San Marco university district.

Yes, Florence’s flush of museums and monuments is world-class. Yet you don’t actually need to step foot in a single one to be bowled over by ethereal masterpieces. This said, please do eyeball Michelangelo’s David close up at Galleria dell’Accademia, swoon over the achingly beautiful Pietà the Renaissance master sculpted aged 80 for his own tomb in Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, and risk losing your mind over his haunting Night, Day, Dawn and Dusk sculptures in the jewel-caked Medici chapels where 49 members of Florence’s infamous Medici clan are buried.

Admittedly Venice’s cathedral is not too shabby, but the unforgettable majesty of dimension and uniquely immersive visits at Florence’s iconic Duomo are on an entirely different scale. Brunelleschi’s brick-red cathedral cupola has been