Florence Tickets: What to Book, Where, and How Far Ahead
Updated September 2026 · Every price and channel checked against the official sources
Florence has three different ticketing systems run by three different organisations, and none of them mentions the other two. That is the whole reason this page exists: not to sell you entry, but to tell you which site is the real one for each monument, what you actually need to reserve, and how to recognise the intermediaries that sit above them charging a margin for the same seat.
Prices, opening days and channels below were checked against each monument’s own site in August 2026. Where something could not be verified, it says so instead of guessing.
The official site for each monument
Start here, because getting this right is worth more than any other tip on the page. These are the sellers the monuments themselves point to.
| What you want | The official channel | Standard price | Also sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uffizi Gallery | uffizi.it, checkout on tickets.uffizi.it | 25 € bought on the day, 29 € bought in advance | Call centre and the ticket office under the loggia |
| Galleria dell’Accademia | B-Ticket, described by the gallery as the only official channel authorised by the Ministry | 20 €. EU citizens aged 18 to 25 pay 2 € | Ticket office at the gallery |
| Duomo complex | duomo.firenze.it | Three passes: Brunelleschi, Giotto, Ghiberti | Ticket offices around Piazza del Duomo |
| The cathedral itself | No ticket needed | Free | But closed to visitors on Sundays and religious holidays |
The Uffizi also runs a genuine phone line, which almost no guide mentions and which is useful when the website is being difficult: 800 615 615 free within Italy, or +39 055 0354135 from abroad, open every day from 8am to 7pm.
How to spot a reseller
Search for Florence tickets and you will meet a set of sites with official-sounding names and museum photography. Most are legitimate businesses reselling real entry, and some are genuinely useful when the official channel is sold out. What they are not is the official seller, and the difference shows up on the price.
We are not going to name and shame individual domains, because verifying each company’s contractual relationship with each museum is not something we have done, and getting that wrong would be unfair. But for the Duomo you do not have to take our word or anyone else’s, because the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore publishes its own list of contractually authorised agencies, under the heading Official Partner B2B, on the same page where it sells the passes. If a site is reselling Duomo entry and is not on that list, it is operating outside the arrangement the Opera recognises.
The Opera is unusually blunt about this in its own words: the ticket is not transferable to third parties, nor can it be purchased through an agent, except by commercial agreement signed with agencies specifically authorized by the Opera. No other Florence monument states it that plainly. For the Uffizi and the Accademia there is no equivalent published list, so there the test below is what you have:
- Compare against the prices in the table above. That is the single most reliable check. A meaningful gap is the intermediary’s margin.
- Look at the domain, not the design. The official ones are uffizi.it, galleriaaccademiafirenze.it with B-Ticket for checkout, and duomo.firenze.it. Names built out of the monument plus the word tickets are generally somebody else.
- Be sceptical of “skip the line” as a feature. At the two galleries, a booked timed entry already does that. See below.
- Check what happens when you cannot go. Official Duomo reservations cannot be changed or cancelled once issued. If a site is offering free cancellation on a dome climb, you are buying a package, not a bare ticket.
None of this makes resellers a bad idea in every case. If your dates are close and the official slots have gone, paying a margin to somebody holding an allocation is a perfectly rational trade. It is only a bad idea when you did not know you were doing it.
How far ahead to book
| What | High season, April to October | Low season | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brunelleschi’s dome | Weeks ahead | Days ahead | Compulsory timed slot, the smallest capacity of the three, and the thing people fly here for |
| Uffizi | Before you fly | Often same day | Timed entry sells out days ahead and the walk-up queue runs to two hours |
| Accademia | Before you fly | Often same day | Small building, one famous object, a permanent queue |
| Bell tower, Baptistery, Duomo museum | No slot needed | No slot needed | Covered by your pass, visit whenever within its validity |
| Churches, markets, viewpoints | Walk in | Walk in | This is most of Florence, and it needs no planning at all |
The Uffizi
Twenty-five euros bought on the day, twenty-nine bought in advance, because the Uffizi is the one monument here that charges you more to reserve. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 8.15 to 18.30, closed Mondays, and the ticket office shuts at 17.30, a full hour before the gallery does.
Every fare, the annual pass that pays for itself in three visits, and the free Sunday that cancels the priority you paid for are in our full guide to Uffizi tickets. Budget three to four hours door to door, which on a two day trip is a serious share of your time: see how it fits before you commit.
If the official site is empty for your dates, or you would rather have the building edited down for you, this is the alternative and what it costs against those numbers.
Uffizi Gallery Small Group Tour with Guide
Ninety minutes with entry included, and the most reviewed Uffizi tour by a wide margin. Against the 25 to 29 € ticket alone, you are paying roughly double for someone to edit the museum down for you. Worth it if the official channel is sold out, or if three hours of unguided corridor is not your idea of a morning.
The Accademia
Open 8.15 to 18.50 with last admission at 18.20, and closed every Monday plus 1 January and 25 December. Entry is 20 €, and EU citizens aged 18 to 25 pay 2 €, which is one of the best deals in Italian museums and is routinely missed by people who qualify.
Two combined tickets exist and are worth knowing about:
- 48 hours, Accademia plus the Bargello: 26 €. The Bargello has the best sculpture collection in the city and a fraction of the queue, so this is close to free money.
- 72 hours, all six museums of the Accademia and Bargello system: 38 €. Only sensible on a longer stay, but a bargain if you are the sort of traveller who will use it.
Free admission days in 2026 are 25 April, 2 June, 4 November and the first Sunday of each month. Booking is switched off on those days, so the only way in is to queue.
Accademia Gallery Tour with Skip-the-Line Tickets
Sixty-five guided minutes, then you stay as long as you like. Worth saying plainly given the numbers just above: the ticket direct is 20 €, so unless you want the commentary or the official channel is empty for your dates, book it yourself and save the difference.
The Duomo complex and its three passes
The most common misunderstanding in Florence is thinking the Duomo is one ticket. It is six monuments in one square, and the cathedral itself is free, with no ticket and no booking, though it closes on Sundays and religious celebrations. Everything else needs one of three passes, and only the Brunelleschi includes the dome climb.
The 463 steps, the 150-step terraces almost nobody mentions, the weekend hours that make a Sunday morning climb impossible and the three monuments currently under restoration are all in our guide to climbing the Duomo.
| Pass | Price | Covers | What has a fixed time slot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brunelleschi | 30 € | Dome, bell tower, Baptistery, Museum, Santa Reparata | The dome climb, first day of the pass only |
| Giotto | 20 € | Bell tower, Baptistery, Museum, Santa Reparata | Giotto’s bell tower |
| Ghiberti | 15 € | Museum, Baptistery, Santa Reparata | Santa Reparata |
| Ghiberti on-site | 15 € | Museum and Baptistery only | Sold at the ticket office, never online |
So a Giotto Pass does not let you turn up at the bell tower whenever you like: you book a slot for it, exactly as dome climbers book theirs. The one genuine exemption is that Brunelleschi holders can climb the bell tower at any point in their three days with no slot at all, which is a real advantage of the dearer pass that its own page mentions only in passing.
And your dome reservation is tied to the first day of the pass, so do not buy a pass starting Monday and plan to climb on Wednesday.
Two more things worth knowing before you pick a pass. The Opera del Duomo Museum closes on the first Tuesday of every month for maintenance, which is nobody’s idea of an obvious closure. And the mosaics on the vault of the Baptistery are currently not visible, as they are under restoration, which takes a good deal of the point out of the Baptistery if that ceiling was your reason for going.
One discount almost nobody publishes: students of any level, Italian or not, can buy the Ghiberti Pass for 5 € by showing a student card at the ticket office. It is not available online and it does not apply to any other pass. Under-7s, visitors with disabilities and their carer, and clergy go free.
The climb itself has rules that are not obvious until you are turned away at the door: 463 steps and no lift, entry from the Porta della Mandorla on the north side rather than the façade, photo identification required alongside the ticket, five minutes of grace on your slot rather than fifteen, bags left at the luggage store beforehand, and under-18s not admitted without an adult. Reservations cannot be changed or cancelled once issued.
The full walkthrough of the complex, including which of the six monuments are worth your time, is in our guide to things to do in Florence.
Do you need a guided tour of the Duomo
Search for a Duomo tour and you will get several hundred results across every booking platform, and almost none of them will tell you the thing that decides the question: the Opera runs its own guided tours, and publishes the prices.
| Official guided tour | Price | Language |
|---|---|---|
| Brunelleschi’s Dome | 50 € | Italian and English |
| The Cathedral | 17 € | Italian and English |
| Baptistery and Museum | 25 € | Italian and English |
| The Baptistery restoration site | 65 € | Italian and English. Gets you up to the mosaics that are otherwise closed |
| Donatello at the Opera del Duomo Museum | 25 € | Italian only |
That 50 € dome tour is the number to hold on to, because it reframes everything on the commercial platforms. The Brunelleschi Pass alone is 30 €. So the official guide, included entry and all, costs 20 € more than doing it by yourself. Most third party dome tours sit between 60 and 80 €.
The 65 € restoration site tour is the genuinely unusual one. The Baptistery mosaics are behind scaffolding and invisible to everybody holding an ordinary pass, and this is the only way to see them at all right now.
So where does a third party tour earn its money
In exactly two places, and it is worth being precise about them.
- Cancellation. This is the big one. An official Duomo reservation cannot be changed or cancelled once issued, full stop. In high season you are booking the dome weeks out, which means committing non-refundably to a time slot on a specific morning long before you know the weather, your flight, or how you will feel. Most platform tours carry free cancellation. That difference is worth real money on a trip that might move.
- Availability. Operators hold allocations separate from public sales, so a tour can have space on a day the official shop shows nothing.
What a third party tour does not buy you is faster entry than an official timed ticket, for the reasons in the next section.
One caution on picking one, and it is a specific one. When we pulled the Florence Duomo listings on 2 September 2026, the cheapest tour on the market at 19 € was also the worst rated in the entire category: 3.86 across 949 reviews. That is a very large number of people arriving at a fairly ordinary verdict, and it is the same listing Google’s own AI summary was citing when we checked the search results. Read the rating before you read the price.
Florence Duomo Tour: Dome & Terraces or First Entry Dome Climb
1,118 reviews at 4.76, which is by some way the strongest evidence base of any Duomo tour we found, and the reason to prefer it over listings with a higher score and a tenth of the volume. Against the 30 € pass you are paying about 38 € more for a guide, the terraces and free cancellation, which is the part the official channel cannot offer at any price.
Florence Duomo with Dome Climb Tickets and Museum Tour
Two and a half hours with the climb and the museum, rated 4.97 but on only 153 reviews, so weigh it accordingly. It was showing at half price when we checked, 60 € against a list price of 120 €, which at that discount puts it within 10 € of the official 50 € tour while adding free cancellation. At full price the maths stops working.
Our own read, for what it is worth: if your dates are fixed and the official shop has your slot, book the 30 € pass and climb it yourself. The dome does not need interpretation to be worth the 463 steps. Pay a third party when the official channel is empty for your dates, or when your plans might still move and a non-refundable ticket is a risk you would rather not take.
What “skip the line” actually means
This phrase appears on a great many listings and is worth translating, because it is the single most oversold idea in Florence.
At the Uffizi and the Accademia, any pre-booked timed entry already skips the main queue. That is what a reservation is. A ticket marketed as skip the line is, most of the time, a normal reservation with a margin on top. You are not buying faster access, you are buying the same access from somebody else.
There is still a second queue at both museums, for security and for collecting the physical ticket, and no product on the market removes that one.
Where paying more does buy something real is a guided visit, and what it buys is not speed. The Uffizi is enormous, and having someone decide which twenty things you stop at is worth money in a building where most visitors lose interest around hour three. On a short trip it also caps the visit, which stops one museum eating a whole day.
What you do not need to book at all
Most of Florence. It is worth saying plainly, because the volume of ticket marketing around the city gives the opposite impression. The same goes for the guided walks that cover this ground from the outside: our page on what a free walking tour really costs adds up the tip and the headset fee the city makes compulsory, against a fixed price walk at 25 euros.
- The cathedral. Free, and the queue moves. Closed to visitors on Sundays.
- The Baptistery, the Opera del Duomo Museum and Santa Reparata. Covered by your pass with no time slot, with the exceptions in the table above: Santa Reparata is slotted on a Ghiberti Pass, and the bell tower is slotted on a Giotto.
- Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, San Miniato al Monte. Three of the best interiors in the city, all walk-in.
- The Bargello and the Medici Chapels. Reservations exist and are generally unnecessary.
- Mercato Centrale, the Oltrarno, Piazzale Michelangelo. No tickets involved anywhere.
If everything is sold out
It happens, particularly with the dome in summer and particularly to people booking inside two weeks. In that order:
- Check the official site again at a different hour. Cancellations and released allocations reappear, and the Uffizi call centre above sometimes has what the website does not.
- Change the day rather than the plan. Moving the dome from Saturday to Tuesday opens far more than any reseller will.
- Then consider an operator holding its own allocation. Tour companies are given inventory separately from public sales, which is why a tour can have space on a day the official site shows nothing. You pay for the guide as well as the entry, so compare against the prices above and decide with your eyes open.
Ratings and lowest advertised prices for the tours on this page were checked on 2 September 2026 and move with date and demand. If the official channels have availability for your dates, use them: they are cheaper, and this page has just spent two thousand words telling you exactly where they are.
Frequently asked questions
What is the official website for Uffizi tickets?
The Uffizi sells its own tickets at uffizi.it, and the checkout continues on tickets.uffizi.it, which the gallery describes as its official ticketing service. There is also an official call centre on 800 615 615 within Italy, or +39 055 0354135 from abroad, open every day from 8am to 7pm, and a ticket office under the loggia of the Uffizi itself. Anything else is a reseller: not necessarily a scam, but you will pay more for the same entry.
Is B-Ticket the official site for the Accademia?
Yes. The Galleria dell’Accademia states on its own website that B-Ticket is the only official channel authorised by the Ministry of Culture. If you are booking David and you are not on the gallery’s own site or on B-Ticket, you are buying through an intermediary.
How far in advance should I book Florence museum tickets?
From April to October, book the Uffizi, the Accademia and the dome climb before you fly, and treat several weeks ahead as normal rather than cautious. The dome has the least capacity of the three and goes first. Buying on the day is actually 4 euros cheaper at the Uffizi, though it is a gamble on availability between April and October.
Do I need to book the Duomo in Florence?
Yes, and which part depends on the pass. Every pass carries one compulsory time slot: the dome on a Brunelleschi, Giotto’s bell tower on a Giotto, and Santa Reparata on a Ghiberti. The rest of the monuments on your pass can be visited at any point in its three days. Brunelleschi holders are the exception that works in your favour, because they can climb the bell tower with no slot at all. The cathedral itself is free and needs no booking, but it is closed to visitors on Sundays and religious holidays.
Are skip the line tickets worth it in Florence?
The phrase is doing a lot of work in the listings. At the Uffizi and the Accademia, any pre-booked timed entry already skips the main queue, so a ticket sold as skip the line usually just means a normal reservation at a markup. What genuinely saves time is booking early enough to choose your slot, and turning up on time. Where a guided visit does earn its money is not access, it is having someone edit a very large museum down to what is worth seeing.
Is the Duomo guided tour worth it?
It depends which one you compare. The Opera runs its own guided tour of the dome at 50 €, against 30 € for the Brunelleschi Pass that lets you climb it alone, so the guide costs you 20 €. On that comparison it is a reasonable buy if you want the history and a poor one if you mainly want the view, because the dome does not need interpretation to justify 463 steps. Third party tours mostly run 60 to 80 € and the thing they add that the official channel cannot is free cancellation, since an official reservation cannot be changed or cancelled once issued.
Do you need a tour for the Duomo in Florence?
No. Every monument in the complex is sold directly to the public by the Opera through its three passes, and the cathedral itself is free. A tour is a preference, not a requirement. The two situations where it stops being optional are when the official shop has no slots left for your dates, because operators hold separate allocations, and when you need the ability to cancel.
How long does it take to tour the Duomo in Florence?
The Opera publishes its own recommended durations, and they add up to more than most people allow: about 45 minutes for the dome climb, 45 for Giotto’s bell tower, 30 to 45 for the Baptistery, 90 for the Opera del Duomo Museum and 30 for Santa Reparata. Doing the whole Brunelleschi Pass properly is therefore the best part of four hours, which is why the pass runs for three calendar days rather than one.
How much is the Brunelleschi Pass?
Thirty euros for adults, 12 € for children aged 7 to 14, and free under 7, checked on the official shop in September 2026. It covers the dome, Giotto’s bell tower, the Baptistery, the Opera del Duomo Museum and Santa Reparata for three calendar days. The Giotto Pass is 20 € and drops the dome; the Ghiberti is 15 € and drops both climbs. Students of any level can get the Ghiberti for 5 € at the ticket office with a student card, which is not available online.
Can you buy Florence museum tickets on the day?
In winter, usually yes. From April to October, the Uffizi and the Accademia regularly sell their timed slots days ahead and the walk-up queue can run to a couple of hours, while the dome climb can be gone for weeks. Both galleries are closed on Mondays, and state museums are free on the first Sunday of each month, when no booking is possible and the queues are what you would expect.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through them we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change what we recommend: we rank on what you get for the money, and we say so when something is not worth booking. Full disclosure.
Next: what is worth your time in Florence or how many days you need.