Interior and exterior stand in sharp contrast in the Franciscan Santa Croce Basilica, one of the city’s most important religious buildings. Looking up at the neo-Gothic facade dominating the piazza you’ll notice a Star of David positioned in the tympanum above the oculus – a symbol left behind by the Jewish architect Niccolò Matas, who completed the marble exterior in 1863. The austere, low-lit interior is notable for its collection of tombs – Michelangelo, Galileo, Ghiberti and Machiavelli are buried here.

But prominent dead people aren’t the sole draw – surrounding Agnolo Gaddi’s grand fresco Leggenda della Croce are nearly 4000 artworks by the likes of Giotto, Brunelleschi and Donatello. A full-price entry ticket costs €8.

This elegant Santa Croce perfumery in a vaulted 15th-century palazzo exudes romance and exoticism. Artisanal scents are crafted here with tremendous care and precision by master perfumer Sileno Cheloni, who works with precious essences from all over the world, including Florentine iris. Organic soaps, cosmetics and body-care products make equally lovely gifts to take back home.

Shortly after its founding in 1421, Brunelleschi designed the loggia for Florence's Ospedale degli Innocenti, a foundling hospital and Europe's first orphanage, built by the wealthy silkweavers' guild to care for unwanted children. Inside, a highly emotive, state-of-the-art museum explores its history, climaxing with a sensational collection of frescoes and artworks that once decorated the hospital and a stunning rooftop-cafe terrace (visit for fab city views).

Brunelleschi's use of rounded arches and Roman capitals marks it as arguably the first building of the Renaissance. In 1445 the first unwanted baby (female, as was commonly the case at the time) was found abandoned on the hospital's doorstep; by the end of the 15th century, it was home to over 1000 children. In the 16th century, such was the demand that the hospital replaced the pila (a concave stone on which infants were left) with a revolving door in which newborns could be left in relative warmth. On display are the various sentimental objects that often appeared with a foundling – coins, rosary beads, a crucifix, ribbons, one half of a broken medal allowing parents to later identify their child. From 1667 the hospital also accepted young mothers as wet nurses, and by the mid-19th-century the orphanage was accepting 2000 children a year.

It’s €9 to visit the permanent collection and €16 for the collection and exhibitions. No museum visit is complete without a drink in the rooftop cafe, Caffè del Verone, at home in the foundling hospital's verone (drying room) where linen was stretched and hung to dry in the 15th century. Andrea della Robbia (1435–1525) added the facade's distinctive terracotta medallions of infants in swaddling clothes.

A Renaissance masterpiece, the Duomo's cupola – 91m high and 45.5m wide – was built between 1420 and 1436. Filippo Brunelleschi, taking inspiration from the Pantheon in Rome, designed a distinctive octagonal form of inner and outer concentric domes that rests on the drum of the cathedral rather than the roof itself. Four million bricks were used, laid in consecutive rings according to a vertical herringbone pattern.

The cupola crowning the Duomo is a feat of engineering and one that cannot be fully appreciated without climbing its 463 interior stone steps. The climb up the spiral staircase is relatively steep, and should not be attempted if you are claustrophobic. Make sure to pause when you reach the balustrade at the base of the dome, which gives an aerial view of the octagonal coro (choir) of the cathedral below and the seven round stained-glass windows (by Donatello, Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello and Lorenzo Ghiberti) that pierce the octagonal drum.

Look up and you'll see flamboyant late-16th-century frescoes by Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari, depicting the Giudizio Universale (Last Judgement). As you climb, snapshots of Florence can be spied through small windows. The final leg – a straight, somewhat hazardous flight up the curve of the inner dome – rewards with an unforgettable 360-degree panorama of one of Europe's most beautiful cities.

It is impossible to visit the cupola without an advance reservation, which can be made online. Book at least a month in advance in high season; in the low season, a couple of days in advance should (hopefully) suffice.

Commissioned to architect Filippo Brunelleschi by Florentine banker Luca Pitti around 1440, Palazzo Pitti has been the residence of the ruling class since the mid-16th century, when Cosimo I de’ Medici’s wife Eleanor of Toledo decided to move here from Palazzo Vecchio, hoping that leaving the city center’s crowds behind would benefit her declining health. Shortly after the Medici chose the palace as their new official residence, expanding the structure and transforming it into the grandiose horseshoe-shaped building we see today.

The palace, which after the Medici’s decline in 1737 became home to the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, houses invaluable paintings, sculptures and historical artifacts. The palace’s museums are comprised of the Palatine Gallery and the Imperial and Royal Apartments, the Treasury of the Grand Dukes (formerly known as the Museo degli Argenti), the Museum of Costume and Fashion, the Gallery of Modern Art and the new Museum of Russian Icons, the vastest collection of Russian icon art outside the historical region of Ruthenia.

The visually striking ‘planet rooms’ are among the Palatine Gallery’s highlights, together with the largest collection of Raphael’s portraits. While the number of artworks can be overwhelming, don’t skip the Treasury of the Grand Dukes, the former summer apartments of the Medici family, where magnificent trompe l’œil frescoes by Giovanni da San Giovanni await.

One €16 ticket covers entry to all of the museums within the Palazzo Pitti, or you can buy a €22 ticket for the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens.

It’s reductive to refer to Boboli as simply a garden – monumental grottoes, majestic fountains and exceptional views are all elements of the 45-hectare expanse that gave way to the European court garden tradition. Developed by the Medici as an extension of their Palazzo Pitti property, the project started in 1549, when Duchess Eleanor of Toledo commissioned the landscape architect Niccolò Pericoli.

Enter via Palazzo Pitti or at Porta Romana and take a few hours to stroll between the great amphitheater found behind the palace to the park’s most intriguing sights. These include Bernardo Buontalenti’s intricate grotto and the Museo delle Porcellane, located inside the neoclassical Palazzina del Cavaliere on the upper side of the garden. A Palazzo Pitti and Boboli Gardens combined ticket is available for €22.

Begun in 1444, the grand Santo Spirito Basilica was the last project Florence’s master architect Filippo Brunelleschi worked on before his death in 1446. When seen from the outdoor seating area of one of the piazza’s many bars, the minimalist, cream-coloured facade might not look impressive enough to make you get up and leave your spritz, but inside the church you’ll find exceptional frescoes including Filippino Lippi’s Pala Nerli (1485–88) and Alessandro Allori’s Cristo e l’Adultera (1577) nestled amid pietra serena columns adorned with Corinthian capitals.

The centerpiece of the Basilica di Santo Spirito is a little-known wooden crucifix that has long kept art historians debating. The slender figure attributed to Michelangelo, who lived and studied anatomy in the church when he was 17, was known through Giorgio Vasari’s writings but deemed lost in the 18th century following the French occupation. It wasn’t until 1964 that the crucifix gained recognition, after German researcher Margrit Lisner claimed that it had never left its original location. According to Lisner, a bad paint job had made Michelangelo’s early masterpiece unrecognizable; while scholars were initially doubtful, further analysis in 1999 supported the theory.

Built on the foundations of a 4th-century church, the harmonious San Lorenzo Basilica was drastically transformed during the 15th century when the Medici declared it their family church and mausoleum, and funded its monumental expansion.

In 1425, Brunelleschi provided a new design to Cosimo the Elder, whose tomb is in the crypt, but the facade’s renovation was commissioned to Michelangelo in 1516 by Pope Leo X. Michelangelo’s Carrara marble project never took off, and the basilica has kept its bare look to this day. Still, in the main nave there are some exceptional artworks, like Filippo Lippi’s Annunciazione Martelli (1440) and Donatello’s Pulpito della Resurrezione (1460).

Tickets to enter the church and museum are €9.

This flagship store of local superstar Ben, a Florentine-based fashion designer who set up the business with schoolmate Matteo after undergoing a heart transplant, is irresistible. The pair swore that if Ben survived, they’d go it alone – which they did, with huge success. For real-McCoy handcrafted leather designs – casual shoes, jackets and belts for men and women – there is no finer address.

Vintage couture for men and women is what this extraordinary rabbit warren of a boutique – surely the city’s largest collection of vintage – is about. Carefully curated garments and accessories are in excellent condition and feature all the top Italian designers: beaded 1950s Gucci clutch bags, floral 1960s Pucci dresses, Valentino shades from every decade. Fashionistas, this is heaven.

Part museum, part (pricey) apothecary, the Officina Profumo Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella is one of the oldest continuously operating pharmacies in Europe. Its origins can be traced back to 1221, when the Dominican monks from the nearby Basilica di Santa Maria Novella began cultivating herbs to make healing balms and ointments. The current pharmacy opened its doors to the public in 1612, when it began specialising in fragrances and perfumes for the Florentine elite and the travelling nobility of the time. Enter the scented hall via the floral doorway and awaken your senses as you roam past the walnut furniture brimming with artisanal colognes.

Founded by the Dominican monastic community in the late 13th century, the Santa Maria Novella is one of Florence’s most precious religious structures, standing right by the busy central station.

The basilica’s symmetrical, green-and-white marble facade is owed to wool merchant Giovanni Rucellai, whose name can still be read in the inscription above the oculus. In the 1450s Rucellai commissioned the young architect Leon Battista Alberti with the completion of the church, which had its front wall left bare. Alberti’s awe-inspiring architectural achievement took the Gothic style to a new level, echoing Florentine Romanesque designs and adding intricate geometrical patterns.

The interior is an unmissable showcase of works by some of the Renaissance greats – Giotto, Masaccio, Brunelleschi and Ghirlandaio all contributed to making the basilica a timeless gallery of inestimable worth. If one work was to be selected as the highlight it would be Filippino Lippi’s visually striking Cappella di Filippo Strozzi, frescoed to represent a series of events that marked the lives of St Philip and John the Evangelist. Tickets cost €7.50.

Opened in 2014, right in front of the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, the Museo Novecento houses a wide collection of 20th-century artworks, in three floors previously belonging to the San Paolo Hospital. The permanent exhibition includes works by Giorgio Morandi, Lucio Fontana, Marino Marini, Carlo Levi and a vast body of works by Florentine painter Ottone Rosai.

Standard tickets cost €5. The adjoining cafe is a worthy stop too – the Cortese Café 900 is Florence’s first raw patisserie, serving cakes, cookies, pralines and gelato made sans flour, milk, eggs, yeast or sugar.

For over seven centuries, the ‘old palace’ has housed the seat of the local government and today it continues to function as Florence’s town hall. The fortification, constructed above the remains of an ancient Roman theatre, was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1299 but gradually expanded over time, following the tastes and ideas of changing rulers. The marvelous courtyard was designed by architect Michelozzo in 1453 and decorated by Giorgio Vasari in 1553 for the wedding of Joan of Austria and Francesco I de’ Medici, and welcomes those who enter the palace.

But the true highlight is the astonishing, 1250-sq-metre Salone dei Cinquecento, originally commissioned by preacher Giacomo Savonarola to gather a 500-member, citizen-led governing body he established after the brief ousting of the Medici. In 1504 Michelangelo’s David was placed in front of the palace’s main gate (where a 20th-century copy now stands) and in 1540 the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I, moved in with his court. During this era the Salone was adorned with the grandiose Giorgio Vasari paintings we see today.

At the center of the coffered ceiling is L’Apoteosi di Cosimo I (1565), a godly portrait of the Grand Duke, and on the walls are huge depictions of two important wars won by the Florentine army: on the west is the battle against the Pisans (fought between 1495 and 1509) and on the eastern side is the conquest of Siena (1553–55). A full-price ticket is €12.50 plus a €1 online booking fee.