Avoiding Those Pesky Queues in Florence

GUEST POST OVERVIEW: Man, if there’s one thing I hate it’s lines. Right now I’m backpacking across India and while there may not be giant lines, there sure are some huge crowds. Like they say here, same same but different.

Anyway, if you happen to find yourself visiting Florence, Italy’s, most famous attractions, lines are something you will have to deal with. Unless, that is, you follow the tips in this week’s guest post by Aleix.

“Florence is a city of beautiful architecture and full of cultural landmarks everywhere you look. But, in order to see them, you have to stand in long queues. Here are some tips on how to avoid them.

There are so many cultural and architectonic landmarks to see in Florence that you will need to stay for a few days in order to see them all. The Duomo, the Uffizi Gallery and the Galleria dell’Accademia, where the Michelangelo’s statue of David are just some of the places that everyone must see.

In order to see them, however, you probably will have to join a long queue that can go on for hours and hours and leave you standing there in the heat of the Italian summer and, by the time you get in, you’re already tired and drained. But that doesn’t always have to be like that.

On my first trip to Florence something totally unusual happened to me: I saw all of those landmarks without having to queue for a single minute. And, no, I’m not lying, although I can admit it’s hard to believe. What you have to do to avoid the queues is quite simple. The best time of year to go there is just before the peak season begins (July and August) and after schools finish, because most schools will do end of year trips to Florence.

A good time of the year to go to is in the month of June. To enter the Duomo without queuing, all you have to do is go there mid-morning, around 12-1 o’clock, because that’s the time that Italians and tourists tend to start having lunch. If there’s still a bit of a queue, you can have a nice quick gelato sat in one of the cafés on the Piazza del Duomo.

To see the statue of David of Michelangelo is a bit less traumatic because it’s not in the touristic epicenter of the city. A good idea is to rent apartments in Florence nearby the Galleria and check out when there are no queues to go in. Again, mid-afternoon is a fine time to do so.

The Uffizi Gallery is another landmark that is best seen at that time of the day, at that time of the year. When you see the restaurants full, that’s the time to go in! Good luck! Don’t let the queues put you off seeing all the artistic and cultural sites in this beautiful city in the heart of Tuscany!”

About the Author: Aleix Gwilliam is a 24 year old from Barcelona who looks English but thinks like a Catalan. He enjoys travelling, especially on old Czech trains, and trying to start conversations in Hungarian with people at Pecs station, even though his Hungarian is as good as his Bulgarian, in other words, not very good. He’s a trier.