Palazzo Vecchio Tickets 2026

The biggest room in the palace is the first one you reach, and it is the reason most people buy the ticket. Then they stand in the Salone dei Cinquecento, look up at 18 metres of Vasari ceiling, and have no idea what to do next. Palazzo Vecchio is a working town hall wrapped around a Medici apartment block, and it has never bothered to explain itself.

This guide covers what the €18 ticket includes and what it does not, why the tower is a separate purchase with rules of its own, and how to walk the rooms so that the Salone is the beginning of the visit and not the whole of it.

In 3 minutes you'll know:

• Two tickets, not one: €18 for the museum, €20 for the tower (each +€1 online), and a €5 guided visit to the Roman theatre underneath on weekends
• Why Thursday is the day to avoid (the palace closes at 14:00) and why rain cancels the tower
• The order of rooms that turns a confusing palace into a 75-minute route

How much are Palazzo Vecchio tickets in 2026?

The museum ticket is €18, reduced to €12 for ages 18 to 25 and free under 18, plus €1 of presale fee if you buy online on the official site. It covers the monumental apartments: the Salone dei Cinquecento, the Studiolo of Francesco I, the Medici quarters on the second floor, the Sala dei Gigli and the Hall of Maps. Ticket sales stop one hour before closing.

The Arnolfo Tower is a separate ticket, €20 full and €13 reduced (plus the €1 fee), with a booked time slot: on the official engine in late September, an October weekday showed slots every 45 minutes from 9:15 with two to thirteen places each. The ticketing page states that reservation is mandatory, that children under 6 are not allowed up, that under-18s need an adult, and that the tower closes in the rain or under a heat-health alert while the battlement walkway stays open. It counts 418 steps from the ground, 223 of them inside the tower, and there is no lift.

The third ticket is the one nobody mentions: the archaeological excavations under the palace, the remains of Florence's Roman theatre, open as guided visits on Saturdays and Sundays at 12:00 and 12:45, €5, groups of 15. If you are there on a weekend, it is the best five euros in the building.

There is no free Sunday for visitors on the official price list. The civic museums belong to the city, not the state, so the first-Sunday scheme that opens the Uffizi does not apply here. The Firenzecard (€85, 72 hours) includes the palace.

What the museum ticket buys

The route starts in Michelozzo's courtyard, which needs no ticket, and climbs a wide staircase into the Salone dei Cinquecento. The hall is 52 metres long and 23 wide, built in 1494 for Savonarola's Great Council and turned by Vasari into a Medici victory parade between 1555 and 1572. Six battle scenes on the walls, 39 panels on the ceiling, and Michelangelo's Genius of Victory in a niche on the south wall, carved for a tomb that was never built.

Look at the battle of Marciano on the east wall and find the green flag with the words cerca trova, "seek and you shall find". It sits high on the fresco and it has fed a forty-year argument about whether Leonardo's lost Battle of Anghiari survives on a wall behind Vasari's. Nobody has proved it. The flag is still the most interesting two words in the room.

Off the Salone, through a door that most visitors do not notice, is the Studiolo of Francesco I: a windowless cabinet of cupboards painted between 1570 and 1575, one for each element, where the Grand Duke kept his minerals, his poisons and his experiments. It is the best room in the palace, and MUS.E's Secret Passages tour (a few euros on top of the ticket) is built around it, so check whether it is open on the standard route the day you go.

The second floor is the Medici apartments: the quarters of Leo X and the Elements, the rooms of Eleonora of Toledo with Bronzino's chapel, then the Sala dei Gigli with Ghirlandaio's frescoes of 1482 and Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, and finally the Hall of Maps, 53 painted maps by Egnazio Danti from 1563 onward around a globe. Between the two, in a corridor, hangs a plaster face said to be Dante's death mask. The ticket covers all of it. What it does not cover is a route, and that is what the guide below is for.

The tower ticket, and when not to buy it

The Arnolfo Tower is 95 metres tall and the view from the battlements is the one you get from Brunelleschi's dome with the dome in it, which is the argument for climbing this one rather than that one. The argument against is practical. The tower runs on its own slot, closes at 17:00 (14:00 on Thursdays), shuts the moment it rains or the city declares a heat alert, and takes children under 6 nowhere.

Buy it separately from the museum ticket and put the slot at the end of your visit, not the start: the museum takes 60 to 90 minutes and the tower slot is fixed. Do not build a whole day around it. The palace is still the seat of the city council, and the ticketing site warns that institutional ceremonies can close the museum in full or in part with little notice; in September 2026 it also carried a heat-alert restriction on visits. Read its "Visitors please note" box the morning you go. If the tower is closed, the dome climb is the alternative, and it needs a booking of its own.

What most visitors get wrong

They go on a Thursday. The palace closes at 14:00, ticket sales stop at 13:00, and the tower shuts at 14:00 too. Every other day runs to 19:00. Reviews from people who arrived at 15:00 on a Thursday are a genre of their own.

They do the Salone and leave. The hall is the entrance, not the museum. The Studiolo is a door off it, the Map Room is two floors up, and reviewers who "found it underwhelming" are usually describing the big room alone. Give the second floor 40 minutes.

They expect labels. There are few. TripAdvisor reviews praise the frescoes and complain about signage in the same breath, which is why the audio option on a third-party ticket is worth more here than at the Uffizi. If you book official, download something before you go in.

They visit in a July afternoon. The palace has no air conditioning in the monumental rooms and reviewers say so every summer. Morning slots at 9:00 are cooler, quieter, and the square outside is still empty.

Is Palazzo Vecchio worth €18?

Yes, and for a reason that has little to do with the Salone. Florence sells you three great museums and they are all galleries: paintings on walls, sculpture on plinths. Palazzo Vecchio is the only major ticket in the city where the building is the collection. The rooms were painted for the people who lived in them, the Studiolo was a private hiding place, and the Map Room was a Renaissance attempt to own the world in one wardrobe. Ninety minutes here explain the Medici better than a day at the Uffizi.

Where this fits in a Florence day. The palace opens at 9:00 like everyone else, but it does not sell out the way the galleries do, so it is the museum to move around the others. Reserve the Uffizi or the Accademia for the slot you can get, and put Palazzo Vecchio in the gap. It is a two-minute walk from the Uffizi door.

Frequently asked questions

How much are Palazzo Vecchio tickets in 2026?

The museum ticket is €18, or €12 for ages 18 to 25, and free under 18; the official ticketing site adds a €1 presale fee online. The Arnolfo Tower is a separate ticket, €20 full and €13 reduced, plus the same €1, and it must be booked in advance. Ticket sales stop one hour before closing. The official price page lists no free Sunday for visitors: the civic museums run their own scheme, not the state one.

Does the Palazzo Vecchio ticket include the tower?

No. The museum ticket covers the monumental apartments, the Salone dei Cinquecento, the Studiolo and the Hall of Maps. The Arnolfo Tower and the battlement walkway are a separate ticket with their own slot, and the official ticketing site says reservation is mandatory. Third-party tickets follow the same split: the GetYourGuide fast-track ticket states that the tower is not included.

Is the Arnolfo Tower open, and can children climb it?

It opens 9:00 to 17:00 most days and 9:00 to 14:00 on Thursdays, and it closes whenever it rains or a heat-health alert is in force, with the battlement walkway staying open. Children under 6 are not allowed up and under-18s must be with an adult. The official ticketing site counts 418 steps from the ground, 223 of them inside the tower, and there is no lift. Check the day's availability before you build a plan around it: the palace is still the seat of the city council, and the ticketing site warns that ceremonies can close the museum fully or partly at short notice.

How long do you need at Palazzo Vecchio?

Visitors on TripAdvisor report 1 to 2 hours for the museum, and reviews describe it as much quieter inside than the square outside. Add 30 to 45 minutes if you climb the tower. The Thursday 14:00 close is the one that catches people out.

What are the opening hours of Palazzo Vecchio?

The museum opens 9:00 to 19:00 Friday to Wednesday and 9:00 to 14:00 on Thursdays. The tower closes two hours earlier, at 17:00, and at 14:00 on Thursdays. The archaeological excavations under the palace run as guided visits on Saturdays and Sundays at 12:00 and 12:45 for €5, in groups of 15.

Is Palazzo Vecchio included in the Firenzecard?

Yes. The Firenzecard costs €85, runs for 72 hours from first use and covers the civic museums, Palazzo Vecchio included. It only pays if you are doing four or five museums in three days; for the Uffizi and Accademia you still need to reserve a slot with it.

The Salone will still be there when you come back down from the Map Room. Start with it, then go and find the rooms it was built to impress.