Fiesole, a walk on Florentine’s hills

Enjoy a day off close to Florence

by Lucia Scalzo.

Even today, when we wake up in Tuscany, the sun gives us a mild and pleasant day. After some proposals we decide to take a walk to the Florentine hills and stop in Fiesole, a small burg that rises up on a hill near Florence, offering a wonderful view of the city.

The limpid day and the light allow us to identify all the well-known areas like the Cathedral’s dome and the Arno river. The town of Fiesole is pretty small and all uphill. We explore the alleys and we visit first of all the main square and the Cathedral in romanic style.

: Romanic Cathedral

: Abbey’s garden

: Chinese manufact

Going on exploring we discover the San Francesco Abbey. The outside is already specially pleasant: a green field very looked after enclosed by the abbey’s walls. The church both from the outside and from inside is characterised by a gothic style rather sober and offers a particular surprise: a completely free museum that I suggest you to visit. In fact the museum rallies all the “souvenirs” that the Franciscan missionary priests have collected around all over the world. Deserve a particular attention the Chinese and Egyptian manufacts, also rather ancient. A collection that you don’t expect, small but valuable.

We conclude the day with a fast lunch in a square’s bar. Low quality, rude employees and very high prices, but we are hungry and decide to pay for the veranda outside where we can eat under the sun and with the valley’s view.

Florence’s view

Lucia Scalzo, Mondovagando Travel Blog

Visit Florence: helpful hints

Italian name: Firenze

Arrival

The airport of Florence is an international airport connected to the city centre by a bus service (rides every 30 minutes, 6€, it takes 20 minutes to the city). For transcontinental flights you have to stop in other airports. Consider to get to Florence by train from other major Italian cities (from Rome or Milan, i.e.), both Trenitalia and Italo companies stop at St Maria Novella railway stations.

Transports

Florence is a small city and all the most important monuments are close to each other so the best way to visit the city is on foot or by bike. In Florence is available the mobike bike sharing service (it costs 0,69€ for a 20 minutes ride). Anyway is there public transports, a single ticket costs 1,5€ and lasts 60 minutes.

What to do

Florence is the capital city of Tuscany region, in the centre of Italy. The city of Italian Renaissance! In your sightseeing tour, don’t skip St. Maria del Fiore cathedral with Brunelleschi’s great Dome, the Old Bridge on river Arno and the Uffizi gallery where you can find some very important works of art (see Botticelli’s “Primavera”). Get the tickets on line, to skip the long queue!

The best view on the entire city is from Piazzale Michelangelo (i.e. Michelangelo sq.) and you should visit Palazzo Pitti too, with its amazing Garden – the Giardino di Boboli -. If you consider a tour nearby, we recommend you to visit Fiesole.

We also offer a FlorenceTown tour promo to our users! Here you can find a travel diary of the “Inferno Tour” inspired by Dan Brown’s novel.