Florence Tickets: What to Book, Where, and How Far Ahead
Updated August 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 € low season, 29 € high, plus 2 € booking fee | 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 | Just the queue, which moves |
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. What we can give you is the test:
- 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
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 8.15 to 18.30, and closed every Monday along with 1 January and 25 December. The detail that catches people: the ticket office shuts at 17.30, a full hour before the gallery does.
| Ticket | Low season | High season | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uffizi Gallery | 25 € | 29 € | Plus 2 € booking fee. Timed entry |
| Uffizi + Vasari Corridor | 43 € | 47 € | The corridor is not sold on its own |
| PassePartout, 5 days | 40 € | 58 € | Covers Uffizi, Pitti and Boboli. Pays for itself if you do all three |
| First Sunday of the month | Free | Free | State museums, no booking possible. Expect the queues that go with it |
Budget three to four hours door to door. If you are only in Florence for two days, that is a serious share of your time, and it is worth reading how that fits into a two day plan before you commit to it.
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.
The Duomo complex and its three passes
The most common misunderstanding in Florence is thinking that the Duomo is one ticket. It is six monuments in one square: the cathedral, the dome, Giotto’s bell tower, the Baptistery, the Opera del Duomo Museum and the crypt of Santa Reparata.
The cathedral is free. Everything else needs one of three passes, named Brunelleschi, Giotto and Ghiberti. Only the Brunelleschi includes the dome climb, and it covers all the monuments for three calendar days from the date you choose.
The detail that catches people out: only the dome has a fixed time slot. Everything else can be visited at any point within those three days. 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.
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.
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 cathedral. Free, and the queue moves.
- The bell tower, the Baptistery and the Opera del Duomo Museum. Covered by your pass, no time slot.
- 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.
Uffizi Gallery Small Group Tour with Guide
Ninety minutes with entry included, and the most reviewed Uffizi tour by a wide margin. Against 25 to 29 € for the ticket alone, you are paying roughly double for someone to edit the museum down for you.
Accademia Gallery Tour with Skip-the-Line Tickets
Sixty-five guided minutes, then you stay as long as you like. Worth saying plainly: the ticket direct is 20 €, so unless you want the commentary or the official channel is empty, book it yourself.
Ratings and lowest advertised prices checked in August 2026. 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 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. Outside high season you can often buy for the same day, but the booking fee is small enough that there is little reason to risk it.
Do I need to book the Duomo in Florence?
Only the dome climb, which has a compulsory timed slot. The cathedral itself is free and needs no booking. The bell tower, the Baptistery and the Opera del Duomo Museum are covered by whichever pass you buy and need no separate time slot, so you can visit them at any point within the pass validity.
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.
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.