The smart tour map

The initial impact of Florence is a surprisingly dull thud. This is, after all, the city of the Renaissance, of chaps such as Giotto, Masaccio and Botticelli. It’s in Tuscany, for heaven’s sake. You expect evident light, bright hues and uplift.

What you get are streets like grey stone gullies, dark and unrelieved by colour, with palaces apparently inspired by high-security jails. Clearly, Florence was a place of power and serious wealth — that’s palpable — but the beauty and force of the greatest, most sustained burst of artistic creation ever? At first, it’s a little difficult to discern.

As the Florentine guide Christian Petrini says: “Florence doesn’t yield easily. It has to be discovered.” You must, in short, get under the city’s tough shell. Then, gradually, in dozens of churches, museums and, yes, palaces, the extraordinary riches reveal themselves.

Here are the paintings, sculptures and frescoes that not only described new ways of seeing the world, but also reflected a new way of living in it. The consequences reverberate right through to the present.

Naturally, it’s daunting and threatens to overwhelm — the French writer Stendhal was “seized by palpitations of the heart” on leaving Santa Croce church — but the effect is both cumulative and addictive. The more you see, the more you experience, the more even the dumbest artistic numbskull becomes transfixed (believe me on that one).

And the more the rest of Florence comes alive. The most unpromising of the tunnel-like little streets proves to be a fascinating hive of bookshops, ice cream parlours, picture restorers and cupboard-sized food shops rich with hams and olive oils.

Market stalls offer delicious roast sucking pig sandwiches which, with wine, don’t half perk up a cultural day. And there’s a restrained human hum, half Italian, half international tourist.

We’re suggesting a three-day trip. Any more and you’ll be keeling over like Stendhal; any less and you’ll miss important parts of the story. It is, though, a pretty packed three days. You don’t go to Florence to mess about.

()

If no price is mentioned, admission is free

THE SMART TOUR

Times recommends

• Checking into ‘Europe’s dirtiest hotel’
• The best out of season European breaks
• Smugshots special: wintersports