Palazzo Vecchio: the tower costs more than the museum

The Arnolfo Tower costs €13 and the Palazzo Vecchio museum costs €12 (2026), so in Florence the staircase is dearer than the collection, and the tower closes whenever it rains.

€13 to climb, €12 to go in

The museum ticket is €12 and the Arnolfo Tower is €13 (2026), bought separately. Guided visits are €8 on top.

That inversion is the planning fact of this building. Everywhere else in the city a viewpoint is an add-on to a collection; here it is priced as the main event, and the two tickets don't include each other.

The other Musei Civici Fiorentini run from €5 to €10: Santa Maria Novella, the Fondazione Salvatore Romano and the Forte di Belvedere at €5, the Museo Stefano Bardini at €7, the Museo Novecento at €9 and the Cappella Brancacci at €10. Prices on this page are in euros.

95 meters, and four ways the climb is refused

The tower is 95 meters high and the access rules are strict: no children under 6, under-18s only with an adult, no access at all while it is raining, and on a level 3 heat alert the visit stops at the ronda walkway rather than continuing to the top.

Groups are capped at 25 people including the guide, and the Secret Passages tours at 10 per visit. The climb is also advised against for people with mobility difficulties, heart conditions, asthma, vertigo or claustrophobia.

Read those together and the tower ticket is a conditional purchase. In July the heat rule can cut it short, in November the rain rule can cancel it outright, and neither decision is taken in advance. You won't know until you get there.

The Firenze Card, and when it stops making sense

The Firenze Card is €85 and runs 72 hours, with one entry to each participating museum (2026). One entry per museum is the clause that decides it: this is not a pass you re-use on the same building.

Do the arithmetic against your actual list. Palazzo Vecchio plus the tower is €25, and three more civic museums add €20 to €30, which still leaves the card behind unless the big state galleries are in the plan as well.

It is a working town hall

Palazzo Vecchio is the seat of the Comune of Florence, and the city warns of frequent partial or total closures for institutional events. That risk is structural rather than seasonal.

There is no published calendar of those closures. If the Salone dei Cinquecento is the reason you are going, check on the morning, and keep a second plan for the hour you have blocked out.

Getting there: the center is a ZTL

The whole historic center of Florence is a limited traffic zone split into five sectors, A, B, O, F and G, enforced by cameras that read number plates. In sectors A, B and O it runs all year on weekdays from 7:30 am to 8:00 pm, and on Saturday from 7:30 am to 4:00 pm.

A summer night-time ZTL is added from the first Thursday in April to the first Sunday in October, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, indicatively 11:00 pm to 3:00 am (2026). Some gates are reserved around the clock for public transport and emergency vehicles.

Arrive on foot, by tram or by taxi. The sector-by-sector detail is at ZTL in Florence, the rest of the questions about the city are at the Florence FAQ, and the city page is Firenze.

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