Florence experts, would you advise that I reserve tickets in advance of my visit to the Medici Chapel? Only have one morning available to see the chapel; not sure if there are long lines. Reservation charge would be 12 euro's for our family..not an issue, would like to avoid if necessary. Would visit on a Tuesday morning. Thanks.

You didn't mention what time of year you are going - so maybe summer crowds could create a line situation. I can only tell you of my experience going in late September and I had no lines at all - walked right in. As a matter-of-fact, my hotel was near the Chapel and for the week I was in Florence, I never saw a line there. Maybe someone who has visited in summer could speak to what it's like then

I will be visiting the Chapel on July 4th.

We visited on a Sunday morning, after the Academia, at about 10:15 am (that would have been on June 4th). There was no line to speak of.

Hi K,

Since you are going in season and 12e is trivial to you, why not reserve?

You are only charged for the reservation if you use. If the line is minimal when you show up, then just purchase the admission without mentioning the reservation. So, as Ira says, why not?

When I visited, we just walked up and got the tickets there. It is a little visited museum in Florence, I think you would be fine to not have tickets ahead of time.

This time (my 6th trip to Florence and we just returned last Friday) we visited the Bargello and the Palazzo Vecchio for the first time. They were magnificent.

For my first two visits to Florence, I had reservations. That surely didn't matter as both times the guard did not let me enter: "closed today, come back tomorrow". It didn't matter that I had reserved. I figured that they must have had short staffing so didn't open. I'll never know, I guess. I finally saw it during my third visit - Don't miss it!

I would advise-you don't need to, and it is a definite must-see, it's exquisite (and little touristed to boot).

I definitely second Palazzo Vecchio (in Florence, it's great to get a room with some view of the Palazzo Vecchio). The Palazzo Vecchio has been used as a town hall/ city government building since the 1300's. The present mayor of Florence and his City Council (the comune di Firenze) still have their offices there. The rest of the bldg. is a museum.

The Bargello is not as visited as the Uffizi or Accademia - but what the Uffizi is to paintings, the Bargello is to sculptures-it's yet another must-see in Florence. The courtyard and balcony alone are magnificent.

As I recall, the Bargello's hours of operation were something like 9 am - 1:30 pm, which may explain why lots of us don't get there.

Yep - the Bargello's hours are very abbreviated indeed. They close by 1 or 1:30 ... which is why we had never had the opportunity to visit the past 5 times, but this time we made it there and we were quite happy we were able to work it in to our schedule.

Wanderlust, Florence was so frustrating for me. We had three nights there, but arrived around noon on Saturday. It was the first weekend of the month, so we ran into the "first Sunday of the month" and "first Monday of the month" closings. Plus quite a few terrific places close very early in the day. I kept telling my family that there would be a LOT that we coudln't see, but still my husband kept wanting to go to the Bargello and my son kept wanting to go to the science musuem and I kept having to tell them why we couldn't. We had to wait in line for an hour to climb the Duomo on Saturday, essentially dropping off our bags and running there, because it closed early that day and that was the only time it would be open when we were there. Alas, so much to see the NEXT time we're in Florence!

Missypie,
So sorry you were frustrated! When you are in a new, exciting place and want to see it all and can't, it can be frustrating. Yes, next time you are there perhaps you will have a better experience. That is what we have done in the past, we just relax and say, "..next time.." because we always know we'll be back. We STILL haven't climbed the Duomo, though we intended to last week, but again, too much to do. And I think I'll wait until our fall trip. That many steps in the heat can be draining.

We were able to climb the leaning tower last week...much to our surprise...on our third trip to Pisa. I was smiling as I climbed those strange, slick and tilting stairs, knowing Galileo had done the same, centuries before.