THAT IS THE QUESTION. With individual tickets starting at €8, purchasing a multi-day pass not only saves money, you don’t have to wait in line. But which pass is right, a 3-day Florence City Pass for €70 or the 3-day Uffizi Pass for €38? The City Pass covers 72 historic venues around town including the Accademia where Michelangelo’s David resides. Even Flash couldn’t cover that many sites in three days. The Uffizi Pass is good only for the Uffizi Gallery, Pitti Palace and Gardens and Museum of Pietra Dura.
Our ticket to culture, the Uffizi Pass
We visited many of the sites included in the City Pass last time here. The combined cost for the others we are considering now is less than €70 and will take more than three days so we’ll plan to arrive early and go á la carte. We loved the Uffizi but we can digest only two or three hours of Renaissance Art at a time. There is so much of it that a 3-day pass won’t do so we purchased the €100 Annual Passepartout Family pass and now we are all set.
Saint Augustine in His Study
Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo weren’t the only local big-shots. Sandro Botticelli—you might have seen copies of his Birth of Venus—not only was a Florentine but he came from our neighborhood. In fact he is buried just around the corner in Chiesa di Ognissanti, whose bells awaken us at 7:15 every morning. His tomb is being rehabbed but his painting of St. Augustine in His Study hangs prominently in the nave.
Amerigo the Beautiful?
Another Florentine you probably have heard of is Amerigo Vespucci. He is credited with four (some say only two) voyages to what he called the “New World” which inspired a cartographer of the time to put his latinized name “America” on the map. He is depicted as a child in a painting in the nave of Chiesa di Ognissanti.
