Palazzo Vecchio or Pitti Palace, which one to visit

Palazzo Vecchio and Pitti Palace were Medici homes, less than a kilometer apart across the Arno. One tells the story of Florentine government and Renaissance power; the other holds painting galleries, court apartments and gardens. The better pick depends on the traveler and the weekday.

Palazzo Vecchio still works as Florence's town hall, so ceremonies and council events sometimes close single rooms or the whole museum at short notice. The Comune di Firenze posts these closures in its visitor notices, and a check the day before saves a wasted trip.

The visit opens in the Cortile di Michelozzo, where Vasari's workshop painted views of Austrian cities on the walls for the 1565 wedding of Francesco I and Johanna of Austria. Stairs lead up to the Salone dei Cinquecento, built in 1494 for the 500 members of the Great Council and remodeled for Cosimo I by Vasari, who raised its ceiling and covered the wall where Leonardo had begun the unfinished Battle of Anghiari. Michelangelo's Genius of Victory stands in the same hall, and the tiny windowless Studiolo of Francesco I opens off one end.

Upstairs, the Apartments of the Elements and the rooms of Eleonora di Toledo show the Medici at home, with the private chapel Bronzino frescoed for her. Donatello's original Judith and Holofernes stands in the Sala dei Gigli, next door to the Hall of Geographical Maps, where walnut cabinets painted with maps were meant to hold Cosimo I's collections. The Palazzo Vecchio Museum page covers the rooms in more depth.

The Arnolfo Tower is a separate climb of 418 steps with its own ticket, and it closes whenever it rains. Anyone who wants that view over Piazza della Signoria needs to plan for it apart from the tickets on the Palazzo Vecchio page.

Luca Pitti, a banker, began the palace in the mid-1400s at the foot of the Boboli hill. Cosimo I and Eleonora di Toledo bought it in the mid-16th century and made it the Medici residence, the Habsburg-Lorraine grand dukes followed in 1737, and the Savoy kings of Italy lived here from 1865. A single ticket covers the main palace collections, and the Royal Apartments need a dedicated Pitti ticket.

On the first floor, the Palatine Gallery shows about 500 paintings that the Habsburg-Lorraine picked from the Medici collections and hung frame to frame in the state rooms. Raphael has more paintings here than in any other museum, next to Titian, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and Rubens, and Pietro da Cortona frescoed the ceilings of the Planet Rooms between 1640 and 1647. The 14 rooms of the Royal Apartments open only on accompanied 30-minute tours, which start every half hour from 10:00 to 17:00 and must fall on the same day as the Palatine Gallery visit.

The second floor holds two museums. The Gallery of Modern Art covers Italian painting and sculpture from Neoclassicism to the 1930s. The Museum of Costume and Fashion, founded in 1983 as Italy's first state museum of fashion history, owns more than 15,000 pieces and rotates them for conservation, while the restored 16th-century burial clothes of Cosimo I, Eleonora and their son Garzia stay on permanent display.

Three closures affect visits in autumn 2026. The Treasury of the Grand Dukes, on the ground floor, has been shut for maintenance since 3 February 2026 with no reopening date, the Room of the Iliad stays closed until 25 October 2026, and restorers are working through the Quartiere del Volterrano wing of the Palatine Gallery.

Boboli Gardens fill the hill behind the palace, with classical and Renaissance statues, the Buontalenti Grotto, the Neptune Fountain and an 18th-century Kaffeehaus. Gates at Via Romana, Porta Romana and Forte di Belvedere also let visitors in and out. The room-by-room list of what to see at Pitti Palace goes further into each collection.