This guide follows a line through the centre of Florence from the Medici church of San Lorenzo down to the Arno: Piazza della Repubblica on the site of the Roman forum, Piazza della Signoria in front of the old town hall, and two bridges, the Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte Santa Trinita. It is a walk through the city's public spaces rather than its museums, and all five places are stops on our Florence scavenger hunt.
The Basilica of San Lorenzo
San Lorenzo is one of the oldest church sites in Florence: the first church here was consecrated in 393 by Saint Ambrose. The present building was begun around 1419 to designs by Filippo Brunelleschi, with money from the Medici. Funds ran short, the plans were changed, and the church was only finished after Brunelleschi's death in 1446. The bare front is not a ruin but an unfinished job: in 1518 Pope Leo X, himself a Medici, asked Michelangelo to design a facade, and although it was never built, his large wooden model survives.
The church sits at the centre of the city's main market district, and the whole complex is a record of the Medici. Michelangelo designed the Laurentian Library, part of the same complex, and in 1520 he began the New Sacristy with the Medici tombs, which he never finished after he left for Rome in 1534. The Medici Chapels at the apse end hold the tombs of many members of the family.
- The Old Sacristy, the only part finished in Brunelleschi's lifetime, with its interior decoration and bronze doors by Donatello.
- The two bronze pulpits in the nave with reliefs by Donatello, among his last works.
Piazza della Repubblica
This wide, regular square sits exactly where the Roman town had its forum, and the column in the middle stands where the two main Roman streets, the cardo and the decumanus, crossed. In the Middle Ages the area was a market, later called the Mercato Vecchio, the old market, once a new market loggia had been built near the Ponte Vecchio in the 16th century. Cosimo I de' Medici confined the city's Jews to part of the district, which became the ghetto, with an Italian and a Spanish or Levantine synagogue.
All of this was swept away between 1885 and 1895 in the so-called Risanamento, presented as a clean-up but also driven by speculation; critics called it the sventramento, the gutting. The new square got a triumphal arch whose inscription announces that the ancient centre of the city was restored from centuries of squalor to new life. Of the three historic cafés on the square, Gilli, Paszkowski and Giubbe Rosse, the last was a meeting place of writers and artists, including the Futurists.
- The Column of Abundance: the column dates from 1431 and was put back in 1956, topped by a copy of a statue of Abundance. Donatello's original figure wore away long ago.
Piazza della Signoria
Piazza della Signoria has been the political centre of Florence since the Middle Ages, and the Palazzo Vecchio, the 14th-century town hall, overlooks it. In front of it, at the entrance, stands a copy of Michelangelo's David, more than five metres tall; the original is in the Galleria dell'Accademia. The square also saw some of the darkest days of Renaissance Florence: in 1497 the friar Girolamo Savonarola and his followers burned books, gaming tables, fine clothes and poetry here in the Bonfire of the Vanities, and on 23 May 1498 Savonarola himself was hanged and burned on the same square.
Beside the palace, the Loggia dei Lanzi is in effect an open-air sculpture gallery of ancient and Renaissance works. Its two most famous statues are Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa, from 1554, and Giambologna's Abduction of the Sabine Women, from 1583.
- The round marble plaque in the pavement that marks the exact spot where Savonarola was executed.
- The Fountain of Neptune by Bartolomeo Ammannati, dated 1575.
- The equestrian statue of Cosimo I de' Medici by Giambologna, from 1594.
The Ponte Vecchio
The Old Bridge crosses the Arno a short walk south of the Signoria. Earlier bridges here were swept away by floods, the last time in 1333, and the present stone bridge was rebuilt by 1345, with three segmental arches: a main span of about 30 metres and two side spans of about 27 metres. Giorgio Vasari attributed the design to Taddeo Gaddi, though historians today also suggest Neri di Fioravanti. The shops along it once included butchers; a decree later banned them, leaving the goldsmiths and jewellers who still line it today.
In 1565 Cosimo I had Vasari build a raised corridor linking the Palazzo Vecchio with the Pitti Palace across the river, and it runs partly along the top of the bridge. The Ponte Vecchio was the only bridge in Florence not destroyed in the Second World War. The popular story that Hitler himself ordered it spared is a rumour, not a proven fact.
- The windows of the Vasari Corridor running along the top of the bridge, above the shops.
- The bronze bust of the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini by Raffaello Romanelli, commissioned in 1900, on top of a fountain on the east side of the bridge.
The Ponte Santa Trinita
The next bridge downstream has a very different shape. Bartolomeo Ammannati, the sculptor of the Neptune Fountain, built it between 1567 and 1569 with three very flat arches shaped like ellipses, and it is considered the oldest elliptic arch bridge in the world. On the night of 3 to 4 August 1944 retreating German troops blew it up. It was rebuilt in 1958 with original stones recovered from the Arno or cut from the same quarry as the stone of the Boboli Gardens.
- The four statues of the Seasons at the corners, added in 1608 for the wedding of Cosimo II de' Medici and Maria Maddalena of Austria.
- The head of Spring (Primavera): it was missing after the war and was only fished out of the riverbed in October 1961. From the bridge you also get a good view of the Ponte Vecchio.
How to see them in one walk
Start at San Lorenzo and walk south towards the cathedral, then on to Piazza della Repubblica. The streets south of it lead to Piazza della Signoria. From the square, pass by the Uffizi to the river and cross the Ponte Vecchio, or simply walk out onto it, then follow the riverside west to the Ponte Santa Trinita and end there with the view back upstream.
See Florence with World City Trail
Our Florence scavenger hunt turns the historic centre into a game you play on your phone. The route links 10 stops, from Santa Maria Novella to Piazza della Repubblica, and all five places in this guide are among them, together with the cathedral, San Marco, Santa Croce and the Uffizi.
There is also a self-guided walking tour and an outdoor escape game in Florence, for people who prefer a different format.
Play the Florence scavenger hunt →
Take the self-guided walking tour of Florence →
Play the outdoor escape game in Florence →
Facts checked in October 2026.