The City That Invented the Modern World, and Somehow Kept It All.

Things Wroth Knowing

The facts about Florence that don't make it into the brochures.

• Galileo's Middle Finger Is In a Museum: At the Museo Galileo — an extraordinary collection of Renaissance scientific instruments near the Uffizi — one of the exhibits is the preserved middle finger of Galileo Galilei's right hand, mounted upright in a glass egg-shaped case. It was removed after his death in 1642. Given that Galileo spent his final years under house arrest by the Inquisition for insisting the earth orbited the sun, the gesture reads as either accidental or perfect. Either way, it is one of the strangest and most satisfying objects in Italy.

• The Wine Windows: Scattered across the historic centre are small arched openings in the walls of old palazzos — buchette del vino, wine windows — dating back to the 1550s, when Duke Cosimo I de' Medici decreed that noble families could sell surplus wine from their properties, tax-free, through holes in the wall. More than 180 have been documented across Florence. During the 17th-century plague, the windows became an early form of contactless service: wine passed out, coin passed in, no touching. During the 2020 pandemic, several bars and restaurants quietly reopened theirs for exactly the same reason. You can still buy wine through one on Via dei Bardi.

• The Vasari Corridor Was Built in Five Months: In 1565, Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned architect Giorgio Vasari to build an elevated secret passageway connecting the Uffizi to his residence at Palazzo Pitti — crossing the Arno River via the Ponte Vecchio, a full kilometre of enclosed elevated corridor above the heads of ordinary Florentines. The reason was political: the Medici did not fully trust the population and wanted to move between the seat of government and home without exposing themselves. It was built in five months. It also happens to contain one of the world's largest collections of artists' self-portraits, including Rembrandt and Velázquez. It is now open for guided visits via the Uffizi.

• The World's Oldest Pharmacy Is Still Open: The Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella has been operating since 1221, when Dominican friars arrived in Florence and began cultivating medicinal herbs. The rose water they first sold in 1381 — originally prescribed to clean plague-ridden houses — is still on the shelves today. In 1533, the monks made a perfume for Catherine de' Medici as she left Florence to marry the future French King Henry II. The scent, one of the first alcohol-based perfumes in the world, became famous across the French court. The pharmacy opened to the public in 1612 and has never closed. The room you buy soap in has a frescoed ceiling and was once a papal chapel.

• Florence Invented Modern Banking: The Medici Bank, founded in the 15th century, introduced double-entry bookkeeping, letters of credit, and a network of international branches — essentially the architecture of the modern financial system. The word "bank" itself comes from the Italian banca, the bench on which Florentine money-changers sat to conduct business. The florin, minted in Florence from 1252, was for centuries the most trusted currency in Europe. When you use a credit card to pay for anything, anywhere, you are following a practice that was largely invented within a few blocks of where you're eating your ribollita.

• The Mona Lisa's Model is Buried Here: In the former convent of Sant'Orsola — a fascinating building that was a tobacco factory under Napoleon, then a refugee centre, then abandoned for decades before being converted into Florence's first contemporary art centre — lies the tomb of Monna Lisa Gherardini, the Florentine merchant's wife widely believed to be the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous painting. She died in 1542 and was buried here. The building is now open for temporary exhibitions during its renovation. Most visitors to Florence have no idea she's buried in the city that shaped her.

• The Thermometer Was Invented Here: The Accademia del Cimento — the Academy of Experiment, founded in Florence in 1657 under the patronage of the Medici — was one of the world's first scientific societies, and the place where the thermometer was refined into recognisable form. The original instruments are at the Museo Galileo, which is almost entirely overlooked by visitors focused on the Uffizi next door. It is one of the best museums in the city: the collection of Renaissance scientific instruments — astrolabes, armillary spheres, early telescopes, Galileo's own lenses — is extraordinary and the rooms are never crowded.

• The Ponte Vecchio's Butchers Were Evicted by Decree: The Ponte Vecchio has had shops on it since the 13th century, originally occupied by butchers and fishmongers whose waste went directly into the Arno. In 1565, the same year the Vasari Corridor was built above it, Cosimo I evicted all the butchers by decree — partly because the smell drifted into his new elevated passageway overhead. The bridge was reassigned to goldsmiths and jewellers, which it remains to this day. The Florentine word for butcher's shop, macelleria, comes from the Latin for massacre — a reminder of what those medieval bridge shops were actually like.