Private Medici Walk from the Magi Chapel Across the River to Boboli

Piazza San Marco, Firenze

Wait for your guide at the statue of General Fanti.

Palazzo Medici Riccardi

The Palazzo Medici Riccardi is the foundation stone of Renaissance architecture in Florence and the marker of the family's early rise. Cosimo de' Medici commissioned it in the mid-15th century and Michelozzo designed it, one of the first buildings to work to the new ideas of proportion, symmetry and classical reference. Behind the severe rusticated stone front is a refined interior, including the Magi Chapel and its frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli, which are a straightforward advertisement for Medici wealth. The Riccardi family later enlarged it. Political power, artistic experiment and dynastic memory, in one building.

Piazza Del Duomo

Piazza del Duomo is the monumental centre of Florence, where several of the city's defining buildings stand together. The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore dominates it, with Brunelleschi's dome above the roofline, still an engineering problem as much as a work of art. Giotto's bell tower stands beside it, and the Baptistery of San Giovanni, with its marble facing and the golden Gates of Paradise, is one of the oldest buildings in the city. The square is never quiet, which is part of the effect.

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Basilica di San Lorenzo

The Basilica di San Lorenzo is one of the oldest churches in Florence and the one most bound up with the Medici. First consecrated in the 4th century and rebuilt in the 15th to designs by Brunelleschi, it puts Renaissance proportion at the service of a fairly plain religious idea. The bare facade gives no warning of the interior, which holds work by Donatello and a series of chapels dense with symbolism. It also holds the Medici Chapels, with the tombs designed by Michelangelo, where generations of the family are buried.

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Piazza della Signoria

Piazza della Signoria is the historic centre of Florentine power, with the Palazzo Vecchio over it. The square works as an open-air museum: the copy of Michelangelo's David, the Fountain of Neptune, and the statues under the Loggia dei Lanzi. The Uffizi runs off it, which ties the political centre of the city to its artistic one.

Ponte Vecchio

The Ponte Vecchio is the oldest bridge in Florence, known for the row of jewellers' shops along it. Above them runs the Vasari Corridor, the raised passage built in 1565 to link the Palazzo Vecchio to the Pitti Palace. It let the Medici cross the city unseen, looking down on the streets they governed. The bridge and the corridor together are Florence in one object: beauty, power and engineering, stacked.

Palazzo Pitti

The Pitti Palace is the grand Renaissance residence the Medici took as their own. Behind the enormous stone front are decorated rooms and serious museums, including the Palatine Gallery with its Raphaels and Titians. The palace opens onto the Boboli Gardens, a large formal park of sculpture, fountains and long views. Court splendour and art collection in the same place, on the Oltrarno side of the river.

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