Medici Money

Best Time to Visit

Early morning, roughly from eight to ten, or the last hours before sunset. The San Lorenzo streets are calmest before the market and the day-trippers fill them, and the low light rakes across the rusticated stone facades that this walk is really about, making the deliberate roughness of Palazzo Medici Riccardi and the bare brick of San Lorenzo read at their most dramatic. Midday in summer is bright and hot in the open piazzas, especially the Piazzale degli Uffizi and Piazza della Signoria, so those later stops reward a shadier hour. The theme of this tour lives on the exterior, so overcast days work perfectly well and often make the stone look richer.

Pro Tips

• •This is a themed street walk, not a museum crawl. Every stop is written to be understood from the pavement or the piazza, so you never need a ticket or a queue to follow the thread of the money.
• •The first three stops cluster tightly around San Lorenzo, then there is one longer, intentional leg south toward the river. Treat that walk as part of the tour, a transect watching private wealth turn into public power.
• •Read the facades, not just the interiors. The whole argument is in the outside stone: the calculated plainness of the Medici palace and the unfunded bare brick of San Lorenzo say more about the money than any gallery.
• •If you do decide to go inside any of the ticketed sites, the interior galleries and mausolea often require advance booking in peak season, so check availability before you build your day around them.
• •Wear comfortable shoes with grip. The route runs almost entirely on hard stone and cobbles, and you will be standing and looking up a lot, so a light layer and water make the standing-still parts more pleasant.
• •Go at your own pace and skip freely. If a stop does not hold you, move on. The theme picks back up at the next stone, and there is no group waiting on you.