Climbing the Duomo in Florence: Steps, Passes and What Is Closed Now

Everyone writing about this repeats the same three facts: 463 steps, no lift, not for anyone with a heart condition, vertigo or claustrophobia. All true, all on the official site, and none of it will change a single decision you make.

So here is what we found instead, by reading the Opera del Duomo’s own pages this morning rather than other guides. Three of the six monuments are affected by restoration or access changes right now, the dome shuts two hours early on Saturdays and does not open at all on Sunday mornings, and the body that runs the place warns that tickets bought from resellers may be refused at the door.

The warning the Opera prints on its own site

On the same page that describes the dome, the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore prints this:

Tickets to access the monuments managed by Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore are exclusively available on the official website. Online resale by non-authorized third parties is strictly prohibited. Tickets purchased through unofficial channels may be denied entry to the monuments.

Now put that next to what the search results for this page look like. Google’s own sponsored block, above every organic result, offers dome products at 92, 125, 138 and 156 dollars. The official Brunelleschi Pass is 30 euros.

We are not going to pretend that settles it, because the honest counter-evidence is strong. The largest of those reseller products carries 5,813 ratings at 4.5 out of 5, and a stream of people being turned away at the door does not produce that score. The plain truth is that we cannot tell from outside which operators hold authorised allocations and which do not, and we are not going to guess on your behalf.

What we can do is state the two facts and the obvious conclusion. Buy the pass at tickets.duomo.firenze.it. It is 30 euros, it is the channel the Opera names, and nothing sold elsewhere gets you further up the dome. Our guide to official ticket channels across Florence has the same comparison for the other monuments.

What the three passes cost

Two things worth pulling out of that table. The Opera runs its own guided tour of the dome for 50 euros, in Italian and English, which is less than half what the guided dome products in those ads charge and which almost no guide mentions exists.

And there is a discount hiding in the small print: students of any level and any nationality can buy the Ghiberti Pass for 5 euros instead of 15 on production of a student card. Only at the ticket office, never online, and it applies to no other pass.

The mechanics of the passes, including the compulsory time slot that is not always the dome, are covered in our Florence tickets guide. The short version: each pass has its own booked slot, the Brunelleschi is exempt from the bell tower and Santa Reparata slots, and your dome reservation is tied to the first day of the pass.

463 steps, and the 153 that get you a third of the way

The climb runs from the cathedral floor to the lantern through the cavity between the dome’s two shells. 463 steps, no lift. The Opera does not recommend it for anyone with a heart condition or who suffers from dizziness or claustrophobia, and bulky bags are not allowed up.

What no guide breaks down is where those steps go, and the answer changes the decision for a lot of people. The cathedral terraces sit at about 32 metres, roughly 150 steps up, and the dome adds another 310 on top. The terraces are not a different route or a consolation prize. They are the first third of the same climb, stopping at the roofline of the side aisles, on a balcony that runs about 70 metres along each side with the marble of the rose windows at close range.

The terraces are a monument in their own right on the Opera’s list, and they come with a real constraint: they can only be visited with one of the Opera’s own companions or guides, in limited groups, and they are requested rather than simply bought. The official page does not publish a price. In the entire first page of search results for climbing the Duomo, the only mentions of the terraces we found were two social media videos.

One thing we are passing on rather than asserting, because it is not on any official page. A poster on the Rick Steves forum describes the stairwell as a one-way process, you go up, then down, they don’t allow you to go backwards, on the grounds that the stairs are too narrow for two-way traffic. We have not been able to confirm that with the Opera. If it is right, it matters a great deal to anyone uncertain about claustrophobia, because it means the decision to continue is taken once, at the bottom.

And a note on why people climb at all. The usual reason given is the view, which is the weakest argument for it, because the one thing you cannot see from the top of the dome is the dome. The better reason is the part of the route that passes Vasari’s Last Judgment frescoes at arm’s length. A commenter on Reddit put it better than most guides manage: the climb is not exactly for the view, it is to see the frescoes on the inside of the ceiling from up close.

If you are going to pay above the official price

Everything above argues for buying the 30 euro pass direct, and that remains our recommendation. There is one case where paying a third party buys something the official channel does not readily sell, and it is the terraces: the Opera arranges those on request, in small groups, with no published price.

The product below is the one we would look at for that, and the numbers are worth stating plainly before you click. It is 84 euros against a 30 euro pass, so you are paying about 54 euros over the odds, and what that buys is a licensed guide, the terraces, the dome climb and a 72 hour pass for the rest of the complex.

Only for the terraces

Florence Duomo Tour: Dome & Terraces or First Entry Dome Climb

★★★★★★★★★★4.8 · 1,126 reviews

Two and a half hours with a licensed guide, the dome climb, and a 72 hour pass for the bell tower, Baptistery, crypt and museum. The reason to consider it over the 30 € pass is the terraces, which the Opera only grants on request. Its operator gives the step count the official site does not: 153 to the terraces, plus 310 more to the top.

from 84 €

per adult, 72 h pass included, free cancellation

Check availability→

Check the option before you pay. This listing bundles seven different options and its own small print says the inclusions vary by the one you pick at checkout. Two of them, the museum option and the First Entry option, state explicitly that the terraces are not included. If the terraces are why you are buying it, the English options that carry them are the ones named Dome & Terraces and Walking Tour & Duomo. Under 7s are not admitted at all, and the dress code is enforced.

Three of the six monuments are affected right now

Two sections of planning detail remain, and they are the ones that will actually change your dates, because they come from official pages rather than from a guide written last year.

The Baptistery’s vault mosaics are under restoration and are not visible. The Opera repeats this on four separate pages. Those mosaics are the reason people go into the Baptistery. If the Ghiberti Pass at 15 euros was on your list mainly for them, it is currently buying you rather less than you think. Separately, since 10 September the entrance has moved to the South Door rather than the North Door as usual.

Giotto’s bell tower is undergoing major restoration work. The top terrace stays open, but the Opera warns that views may be partially reduced. That matters more than it sounds, because the standard advice everywhere is to climb the bell tower instead of the dome on the grounds that the view is better with the dome in it. For now, that advice comes with an asterisk its authors have not noticed.

And two closures are already announced:

• Bell tower: closed 9 to 13 November 2026
• Dome: closed 16 to 20 November 2026

One more thing that catches people, and it is not a restoration: the cathedral is free but closed on Sundays and religious celebrations, and there is a dress code enforced at both the cathedral and the Baptistery. No flip-flops, no bare shoulders, nothing above the knee.

The dome shuts far earlier at weekends

Read the first three rows again, because the difference between them is the single most useful thing on this page for anyone with a fixed weekend in Florence. The dome takes its last climbers at 6.45pm midweek, at 4.30pm on Saturday, and does not open until 12.45pm on Sunday.

So the classic plan of getting up early on Sunday to climb before the heat is not a difficult plan, it is an impossible one. And a Saturday afternoon arrival loses you two and a quarter hours of slots that a Tuesday would have had. Our two day itinerary already turns on which two days you get, and this is another reason why.

Questions

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