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The Secret Route

Backstreets, garden gates, and rose terraces: reaching Florence's great viewpoint without the crowds.

Wine windows • hidden cloisters • the version for a second visit

Take the Quiet Way Get Early Access
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Across the Centre

Threads the core and crosses to the Oltrarno

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Wine Windows

Over 180 survive. Several serve again

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Half a Day

Longer if you stop, and you should

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Mostly Free

A few interiors charge; the route does not

🧭 Why This Experience

Florence with the volume down. Wine windows, the oldest pharmacy's frescoed halls, hidden cloisters, artisan streets, and viewpoints that never make the postcards. A route for second visits, or first visits that want to feel like second ones.

🏛️ The Backstory

The buchette del vino, little arched wine windows in palace walls, date from the 1500s, when families sold their vineyards' flasks direct to the street. Plague years made them contactless commerce four centuries early.

💡 Worth Knowing

Over 180 wine windows survive in Florence, mapped by a dedicated association, and several reopened for actual wine service after 2020, history repeating as aperitivo. The 'secret' Vasari Corridor above the Ponte Vecchio reopened to booked visits in 2024.

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  • The wine windows are marked with a small plaque by the association that maps them. Once you see one you start seeing them everywhere.
  • Several churches have cloisters that cost a euro or two and are empty at any hour.
  • The Officina di Santa Maria Novella is free to walk into and is a frescoed hall, not a shop front.

  • Between two and four the centre empties out. That is the hour this route is built for.
  • Many small sites shut Monday. Check before you build a day around them.
  • This is the best wet-weather route in Florence. Most of it is indoors or arcaded.

  • Small entries and wine windows are cash operations more often than not.
  • Cobbles the whole way, and some of it is uphill on the Oltrarno side.
  • This is a second-visit route. If it is your first three days, do the famous things first.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the wine windows?
Small arched hatches cut into palace walls, used from the 1500s by Florentine families to sell wine from their estates straight to the street. More than 180 survive in the city and several started serving again after 2020.
Is this route suitable for a first visit?
It works better on a second. It deliberately avoids the queues, which means it also avoids the Uffizi, the Accademia and the dome climb.
How long does it take?
Half a day at a walk, a full day if you stop at the cloisters and the pharmacy and take a proper lunch. There is no fixed order to it.
Can I see the Vasari Corridor?
It reopened in 2024 with timed entry and limited numbers, booked separately. From the outside you can trace its whole run along the river and over the Ponte Vecchio, which is free and nearly as satisfying.

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