Visiting priorities in Florence

For the view head up to Piazza Michelangelo at sunset- hard to beat
Walk back down and spend the evening in Oltrarno, have dinner there, etc.

While there are dozens of other great museums you might hit museum overload so maybe just wander thru Mercato Centrale and have lunch or dinner?

We like Santa Croce a lot, interesting tombs and then visit the leather school behind the church.

I don't have a recommendation for time alottments, since I could (and have) spent most of one day just in the Uffizi. But the Academia should take the least amount of time (an hour or less) if you just want to see the Michaelangelo statues. You will want to have advance tickets purchased and time slots reserved for everything you mentioned. If you only want to see the views from the bell tower, that's kind of redundant since you also have those views from the dome climb. So with limited time, perhaps scratch that.

An evening view of the city- the obvious one is from Piazzale Michaelangelo, across the river from the historic center. Personally I think the view from San Miniato al Monte is better.

Ninety minutes for Academia. For Uffizi, depending on your interests 3-4 hours, but you can't see it all.
The Bargello is another museum that doesn't get very many visitors, but if I ever make it back to Florence, it will be the first place I go.

Thank you SO much for taking the time to reply to my inquiries! This helps me gauge my walking map and planning of Florence. My spouse just said maybe we should just do non stop walking and forego sleeping ;-) :-) So excited to see all the beauty of Italy!

We just came back from 3 nights in Florence, and there was still so much we didn't see. While I'm glad we booked a skip-the-line tour of the Uffizi and Academia with a short 2-hr walking tour between, it ate up so much of our day. It was absolutely a gem of a tour, but I don't know if I would have felt like I had "seen" Florence if that comprised the duration of our stay, so I'm torn. I would want a little more time to walk and rove the streets. The day that captured the essence of the city, we arrived around 10:30 am, checked in at the hotel, freshened up, browsed an outdoor market, got lunch at a bakery at noon, did a spontaneous climb of Giotto's Bell Tower at 2:30pm, a timed cupola climb of the Duomo at 3:45, walked back to our hotel, put our feet above our heart and charged my phone, left at 5:30 to climb to San Miniato. We caught a sunset view of the city, listened to vespers sung inside the church (6:30p), walked back to town, had dinner at da Tito's, walked back through town, peeping the well-lit buildings with gelato along the way.

For mornings, try popping into my favorite basilica Santo Spirito (closed Wed) or touring the outside of Orsanmichele while listening to Rocky Ruggiero's Rebuilding the Renaissance podcast (episodes 39 and 40). These things need neither tickets nor timed entrances.

Given your time frame (and your handle) I would concentrate on seeing the city itself and avoid spending anytime standing in line to see "sights".

The Uffizi is an amazing collection but could easily kill your entire time in the city so unless some of the artworks are on your bucket list I would choose something less time intensive. If seeing David is on your list I would recommend getting a timed ticket and using that as an excuse to do the "Renaissance Walk" across the city from the river to the Accademia. The Accademia is a 90 minute visit if you are only interested in the Michelangelos. If you buy a Giotto Pass it gives you untimed access to climb Giotto's tower as you pass by it and access to the Duomo if the line is short when you pass by. (This is probably blasphemy but aside from the dome I don't think the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore stacks up with the other great cathedrals of Europe and I wouldn't waste an hour of your precious time waiting in line for it.)

If you want to concentrate on outdoor activities - as your handle suggests - you could cross the river to the Boboli Gardens and tour them and them make your way to Piazzale Michelangelo for sunset (with 1,000 of your closest tourists friends).

It is entirely up to you and your collective interests, but think with the limited time I would work to just visit the great city itself. Maybe squeeze in one or two carefully chosen sights - but concentrate on the experience and plan to come back with more time.

My $.02 - have a great visit,
=Tod

The Uffizi will be a big chunk no matter how you slice it. I think it’s ok to pass on it this time around (assume you’ll be back.) Or maybe save this for your morning before the train, if there’s time. Seeing the David is worth it and is a short visit. Timed tickets make this very manageable.

Climbing the Duomo is another big thing that can take time and energy. I enjoyed climbing the tower of Palazzo Vecchio instead. The interior is pretty awesome in its own right, and really the view is better because you’re actually looking at the Duomo versus standing on it! And it’s straight stairs, where the Duomo can be a bit claustrophobic and challenging. There’s a long line to get inside the cathedral, but most of its art is in the Duomo Museum. I would visit the museum over the Duomo interior.

I think some general off the cuff exploration might suit you better. There’s tons of chapels and churches that don’t make it into the bulk of tourist itineraries: Medici Chapel, Santa Maria Novella (a treasure trove of art!) Brancacci Chapel, Orsanmichele.

It’s tough to not overdo it in Florence, but I think it helps to arrange your sightseeing like short episodes. Enjoy!

I would also give a vote to the Duomo Museum, especially if you can see it first thing in the morning without any crowds. Our RS guide recommended it and it wasn’t on our list of sites to see, but we ended up loving it. I think the Uffizi is magnificent if you love art, but otherwise…David is breathtaking. You really can’t go wrong with whatever you decide to do, but make sure to have gelato stops.

Thank you so much for all your suggestions! I am "bookmarking" them to make the most of our trip! Yes, I love all the suggestions of walking things to see ... as we do love hiking :-)

@enbateau ... thank you for the dining recommendation. where is da Tito's that you had dinner? Is this the full name of the diner?

(Antica) Trattoria da Tito at Via S. Gallo, 112

We just spent 6 nights in Florence, using the Firenze card (on the app, got the 48hr extension) and we also got the lowest pass for the duomo (no dome climb and no bell tower climb). We went full out for all the museums and churches we could fit in 6 days, but that's not for everone. Anyway, a couple of observations: we had timed entry for Uffizi at 9:45am on a Friday - we arrived around 9:15 to pick up our tickets (from the reservation desk) and were actually let in about 20 minutes early. The museum was crowded but we used our head sets and RS audio tour and were able to see everything we wanted. We also sat out on the terrace cafe for a little while, total time in the museum maybe 2.5hrs. We had 11am reservations for the accademia on Saturday - the area in front of the museum was extremely crowded. There are several color coded lines, we needed the red "individual reservation" line. Our tickets said 11-11:15am. There were lots of workers directing folks and answering questions but they were very strict, they weren't letting anyone in earlier than the start of the time slot, and if you tried to stand in line, they would tell you to move aside until the time slot opened. There was a little bit of a rush at exactly 11 as those with that time slot were milling about just waiting, but the line moved fast, security wasn't too bad and we were probably inside within 5 minutes. We did the RS tour inside and then spent extra time, maybe 1.5 hrs total.
I thought the duomo museum (separate building, behind the dome) was fascinating. And, for those that don't climb the dome, you can get up to the terrace of the museum, there's no cafe or anything but you can just stand out there and get a fairly unobstructed close up view of the dome. We probably spent 2 hours just in that museum. Unfortunately the baptistry is still undergoing renovation so we could enter and look around, but you can't see the ceiling. I think it's scheduled to be finished in the next month or so?
We loved using the RS audio tours, we did all of them in Florence, including the 2 outside walks.