Florence Walking Tour: Renaissance Secrets and Scandals

Meet your guide near Piazza Davanzati in central Florence and begin your entertaining small-group tour through the city streets. While you walk down hidden alleyways, learn about the city's sordid past, when the world’s oldest occupation was the city’s biggest business.

Your guide will uncover aspects of the city you don’t normally hear about, such as how certain streets segregated the lower-class prostitutes from the upper middle–class courtesans. Learn about the socially accepted behaviors of political figures, popes and peasants in some of the most scandalous events of the Renaissance

Discover how some of the city’s strange street names came about on your way to the public squares found throughout central Florence, such as the famous Piazza della Reppublica. At the Piazza del Duomo, walk past the octagonal Baptistery of St John, which stands across from the Duomo cathedral and the Giotto bell tower (Campanile di Giotto). You’ll view the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, a Renaissance palace, and the Bargello—a former barracks and prison housed in the oldest public building in Florence.

Along the way, your guide reveals the weird, and often wretched, mixtures that passed for medicines during the Renaissance, and shows you where to find (good!) elixirs for sale today. Visit an ancient well where bodies were discarded. Many locals still fear to tread near the massacre site today!