A Short Walk Between Two Florentine Piazzas, Florence, Italy

While Florence is a city of big-hitter sights (the Duomo, the Uffizi, the Accademia), it is also a city of winding streets and picturesque piazzas. A city of hidden gems, street art and welcoming bars and cafés. A city of churches, of monuments and markets. In short, it is Italy.

And as in any Italian city, the best way to explore is on foot, and slowly. On our recent visit, with only three days in which to see something of Florence and a wish to avoid the crowds for most of the time, we decided to pass on two of those three big-hitters, the Uffizi and Accademia, and instead focus on soaking up the atmosphere and visiting some of the less busy museums. And of course simply wandering ‘through these old streets’.

This will be a short walk, but it will neatly link two different piazzas with some interesting sights along the way.

We’ll start in the Piazza di Santa Croce. I’ve already shared some photos of this beautiful space in my post about the basilica which dominates its eastern side. Here are a few more:

Interestingly, there was some filming going on here during our stay. We talked with someone from the production team who told us it was for a short film, Dinner with Dante. In it, the protagonist has weekly monologues in her mind with the statue of Dante in this piazza in an effort to come to terms with some trauma she experienced in WWII. On separate days we saw the actress as a young woman and then much older. I noted the scar on her cheek, presumably linked to that trauma. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).