In a city as beautiful as Florence, which feels equal parts like a Renaissance jewel box and a vibrant living city, a room with a view (as in E.M. Forster’s immortal novel of the same name, based in the very same place) feels not just desirable, but essential. While you can’t actually lodge at the fictional Pensione Bertolini that Forster wrote about, the city fortunately offers no shortage of other respites from the crowds that flock here every year.
Many of the most discerning hotels in Florence are set within meticulously restored 15th-century palazzi, where grand frescoed ceilings, sweeping staircases, and antique furnishings evoke the splendor of the city’s past. These storied buildings can feel like intimate museums, each one representative of a distinctly Florentine story. Yet the city is equally attuned to the present, with a new generation of design-forward hotels that lean more to this century and the next. You just might find that Florence’s most beautiful hotels have sweeping vistas to offer, but also windows into the city’s beating heart.
Perks: Views of Florence, a short drive to the city center, private gardens, pool, fine dining restaurant, spa
In the hills of Fiesole, Il Salviatino has arguably the most sweeping vistas of Florence, and you could easily pass a whole day sitting in the rose- and lemon-lined Italianate gardens, watching the light change around the Duomo. But it’s hardly just about the grounds here—although Il Salviatino’s 30 acres, complete with cypress-ringed pool, are beautiful enough to weep over. Built as the 15th-century country home of the noble Salviatino family, the hotel’s location would have, at its origins, felt like a world away from the city. Today, the eight-kilometer distance is a welcome respite, a world unto itself that’s peaceful with a side of rock and roll. The 39-room hotel, which opened right before the pandemic, has been eccentric and meticulously created by its owner, Alessandra Rovati.
Rovati, who is also the owner of Tearose, a preeminent Milan-based floral and event studio, has curated every inch of the building, filling it with a heady mix of vintage Italian designs, furniture she’s fabricated herself, and things she’s collected from decades of travel (some chairs in the library are from the Ritz Paris, for example). Everything in the hotel moves around much like it would in a private home—vases change shelves, chairs jump from room to room, pictures find new walls, and even fabrics on the furniture change by the season. Rovati floods her hotel with her first love—flowers—and fresh blooms are generously, profusely displayed in each space, rivaling the grandeur of the building itself. Il Salviatino’s former orangery and wine cellar has been converted into six guest rooms that have their own private gardens, as well as a small spa that glows a radiant Portuguese pink marble. Da Giacomo al Salviatino, the sister restaurant to the legendary Giacomo Milano, serves a fish-centric menu on a terrace overlooking the city. From $792 per night.
Perks: Michelin-starred restaurant, in the city center, views of the Duomo, spa
Beatrice Portinari was the source of so much of Dante Alighieri’s love and longing, that to step into the home in which she lived feels something akin to reading Dante’s private journals. That home, an impossibly grand 15th-century Renaissance palace in the center of Florence, is now the Palazzo Portinari Salviati hotel. The palazzo has been meticulously preserved, and ongoing restoration work continues on some of the building’s most precious frescoes. The original mosaic floor in the room that now houses Palazzo Portinari Salviati hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant, Atto di Vito Mollica, has been covered with a floating glass floor to protect it from further ravages of time. Other echoes of the palace’s past, like original Tuscan terra-cotta floors, ornately decorated ceilings, and original marble fireplaces, remain throughout the ground floor and the 13 guest suites. A very modern addition of a spa, complete with Turkish baths, is an added perk. From $737 per night.
Perks: In the city center, private garden, pool, spa, Michelin-starred restaurant
Set across two historically significant buildings and a staggeringly large 11-acre garden (the city’s largest), the Four Seasons is something of a sight to behold. Its central building, the Palazzo Della Gherardesca, was built during the height of the Florentine Renaissance, in 1473, by the politician and author Bartolomeo Scala, who conceived of his magnificent structure as an homage to ancient Rome. The palazzo went on to become the home of the noble Della Gherardesca family, and later, of a Medici cardinal. Following a nearly decade-long restoration, the palazzo, as well as a 16th-century convent across the garden, opened as the hotel. A Four Seasons hotel conjures many things, and here, it conjures some of the most impressive examples of Renaissance architecture and opulence. Many of the hotel’s rooms retain original frescoes. Add in views of the Duomo and a Michelin-starred restaurant, Il Palagio, and it all feels fittingly over-the-top. From $1,936 per night.
Perks: In the city center, near the Piazza della Signoria, fine dining restaurant, spa, private courtyard and rooftop terrace
Florence’s rich Renaissance history dominates the city’s landscape (and rightly so), but stepping into La Gemma Hotel, not far from the Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi Galleries, the past feels about a million miles away. The new-ish La Gemma Hotel (it opened in 2023) has 39 rooms that feel like a box of petit fours, pristinely done up in a soft palette of greens and pinks made as much for enjoying as just admiring. Here the design is far more 20th-century than 15th, with Art Deco furnishings and some details (like the sculptural velvet beads) that lean ever so slightly into the Hollywood Regency aesthetic. Blonde wood floors, whitewashed ceilings, and palm print wallpaper makes it feel that you could indeed be in West Hollywood—or Buenos Aires or New York, for that matter. It’s all a contemporary breath of fresh air, and fresh and new in a way that the rest of the city has, understandably, shied away from. A subterranean spa boasts a sauna, a hydrotherapy pool, and treatment rooms that utilize Biologique Recherche products. Luca’s, the fine dining restaurant, serves four- and eight-course prix fixe menus, as well as à la carte options. From $551 per night.
Perks: In the city center, close to the Uffizi Galleries, walking distance to the Santa Maria Novella train station
Located ideally between the Piazza della Repubblica and the Palazzo Strozzi, this boutique hotel in the center of Florence is so discreet you might not even know it’s there. Yet the Palazzo Vecchietti has withstood centuries of change since its origins as the 16th-century home of the Florentine noble Vecchietti family. Today, the Vecchietti palace is an intimate 12-room hotel that harmonizes its past with its present. The building’s central cloister, remnants of an ancient Byzantine tower, medieval fireplaces, and original cornices work in concert with a sleek, boldly colored contemporary design. One of the former home’s great pieces of art, Botticelli’s Sant’Agostino nello Studio hangs in the Uffizi Galleries, about a five-minute walk away. Perhaps as a nod to its aristocratic origins, breakfast in bed is encouraged, and baby bathrobes are provided for traveling families. From $534 per night.
Perks: Near the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, private garden
A walk across the Ponte Vecchio takes you slightly further from the city’s center in the heart of the spectacular Boboli Gardens and Palazzo Pitti. It’s in this area, the Oltrarno district, where you’ll find Ottantotto, one the city’s most understated boutique hotels. Encompassing just seven rooms, Ottantotto is a quiet alternative to its larger peers and crowded piazzas across the river, offering an escape with a private garden and outdoor courtyard. The design here is softer than some of its counterparts, with bathrooms decorated with a collage of Renaissance prints, and walls that have been pattern-drenched in wallpaper that matches the upholstered headboards. Original imposing stone mantelpieces exist throughout, with some still in use and others as grand nooks for beds. Exposed brick walls and skylights give a slight contemporary edge to the historic building, which has had several lives as everything from a private home, to a foundation’s headquarters, to a baker’s workshop. From $232 per night.
Perks: Views of Florence and the Tuscan countryside, lush garden, small farm, pool, restaurant
A Renaissance home built by a poet is bound to become the stuff of legends. And there’s something distinctly poetic about Hotel Torre di Bellosguardo, located just a few kilometers from Florence’s center. Built in the 13th century by the poet Guido Cavalcanti, Torre di Bellosguardo was frequently visited by Cavalcanti’s good friend and Florence’s most famous writer, Dante Alighieri (Galileo was also known to be a frequent guest). A 10-year restoration transformed the 700-year-old building into a rustically dreamy hotel and a magnificent example of preserved early Renaissance architecture. The 16 guest rooms have been simply—almost sparsely—decorated to let the building, including its original frescos by Renaissance artist Bernardino Poccetti, speak for itself. From $482 per night.
Perks: Restaurant and wine bar, rooftop terrace, decidedly contemporary
Opposites attract, so they say, and at The Hoxton, in the north of Florence near Piazza della Libertà, two wildly different buildings have come together to form a hotel. Here, 158 guest rooms stretch across a 16th-century former palace once occupied by the Ricasoli family, who are credited with creating the first Chianti, and a building from the 1980s designed by local architect Andrea Branzi. The result is an eclectic blend of the Renaissance with the postmodern. Rooms in the Ricasoli palace reflect the building’s origins with more traditional design, frescoes, and limewashed walls, whereas rooms in the Branzi building echo the ’80s with bold geometric patterns and funkily shaped furniture. It’s a large hotel for a small city, and The Hoxton’s hip wine bar, Enoteca Violetta, has become something of a modern fixture in the neighborhood. From $230 per night.
