Palazzo Vecchio tickets

Museum and tower: two tickets

Palazzo Vecchio is still Florence's town hall, which explains most of what's different about visiting it. The museum belongs to the city, not the Italian state, so the state-museum rules don't apply: no free first Sunday, no €2 EU youth ticket, its own prices.

There are two official tickets:

• Museum: €18 full price, €12 for ages 18–25 and university students; the city lists no EU-only condition, but bring ID or a student card.
• Arnolfo Tower and battlements walkway: €20 full price, €13 reduced.

Buy online on the city's official ticket site (bigliettimusei.comune.fi.it) and you pay €1 extra per ticket. The tower has its own compulsory timed booking: check in the ticket description exactly what it includes before paying, so you know if you also need a museum ticket. Arrive 15 minutes before your tower slot.

Under-18s go free, as do disabled visitors with companions and some professional categories, but even free visitors must book an entry time online. The ground-floor 'Tracce di Firenze' section is free for everyone, during normal museum hours.

The Firenzecard (€85, valid 72 hours) covers Palazzo Vecchio too; holders book a time through the Firenzecard app or website.

Hours: short Thursdays, rain closes the tower

The museum is open seven days a week: 9 am to 7 pm, except Thursday when it closes at 2 pm. Ticket sales stop one hour before closing. It's one of the few big museums open on Mondays, when the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Pitti Palace are all closed.

The tower keeps its own hours: 9 am to 5 pm, Thursday until 2 pm. In rain or during heat alerts the tower closes and only the battlements walkway stays open. If the forecast looks bad, don't plan your whole afternoon around it.

Because the building hosts the city council and civic ceremonies, individual rooms (the Hall of the Five Hundred included) sometimes close for a few hours, or the museum shuts for a day. The city posts these on the museum's visitor notices page; check it the day before. After a partial closure you can ask for a refund within 5 working days of purchase.

The Secret Passages tour and partner tickets

The part of the palace people remember most is what the standard ticket doesn't show: the staircase hidden inside the wall built for Walter of Brienne, Duke of Athens; the tiny painted Studiolo of Francesco I de' Medici; Cosimo I's treasury room; and the huge roof trusses above the Hall of the Five Hundred. You see them on the Secret Passages tour run by the MUS.E foundation: 75 minutes, €8 for non-residents, on top of the museum ticket. Tours start at 10:00, 11:30, 14:30 and 16:00, and on Thursdays only at 10:00 and 11:30, so book ahead.

Tiqets, GetYourGuide and Headout sell their own secret-passage tours plus entries with audio or video guides, some including the tower. They usually cost more than the official tickets. They make sense when MUS.E slots are full, when you want a guide in a particular language, or when you'd rather buy everything in one go with the times fixed.

Climbing the tower and practical tips

The tower rises 95 metres. The route is stairs only: 418 steps in total, 223 of them on the stone staircase inside the tower. It isn't accessible for visitors with reduced mobility, children under 6 aren't allowed, and under-18s must be with an adult. At the top, the crenellated lookout gives you the Piazza della Signoria below and the Duomo's dome straight ahead.

The rest of the museum is accessible through the side entrance on Via dei Gondi, with a lift to the Hall of the Five Hundred; the mezzanine, the walkway and the tower are not. Umbrellas, small backpacks and large bags must go in the free cloakroom by the ticket office in the Cortile della Dogana.

Allow a couple of hours for the museum, half a day with the tower and the secret passages. Palazzo Vecchio sits right next to the Uffizi, so the two pair well: Uffizi in the morning, Palazzo Vecchio in the afternoon, unless it's a Thursday.