Top 10: the best hotels in Florence city centre
An expert guide to the best hotels in Florence city centre, including the top places to stay for contemporary design, Florentine elegance, glamorous suites, fine-dining restaurants, friendly service and panoramic views, in locations close to Il Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, Via Tornabuoni, the Uffizi Gallery and the Galleria dell'Accademia.
This is the only one of Florence’s five-star hotels that manages to preserve its grand hotel cachet while seeming fresh, hip and artsy. The design is a sapient mix of contemporary artworks (including several large repeat-pattern ‘fashion’ canvases of shoes or hats) and more classical soft furnishings and antiques. The style might be defined as comfortable contemporary chic. On wide, café-lined Piazza Repubblica, the Savoy is close to all the sights, and within easy reach too of Via Tornabuoni, Florence’s high-end fashion street.
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Filled with antiques, old master paintings and prints, and fine fabrics, the historic Helvetia & Bristol preserves an air of Old Florence, but with a hip, perky edge. The location, between chic Via Tornabuoni and Piazza della Repubblica, couldn’t be more central. While the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi and the Palazzo Vecchio are only a short stroll away, this little corner of the centro storico feels removed from the worst of the tourist crowds. Culture hounds will appreciate the dynamic programme of temporary exhibitions offered by the Fondazione Strozzi in Palazzo Strozzi, just over the road.
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J.K. Place Firenze is one of Italy’s classiest townhouse hotels. It has been much imitated since its launch, but few of the copies match the warm, suave, elegant original. It's a distillation of Florentine elegance, with a classic-contemporary décor the result of a meeting of minds between Italo-Israeli hotelier Ori Kafri and local interior designer Michele Bonan. You’re as likely to find fashion designers here as couples in town for a long weekend treat. It’s on lively Piazza Santa Maria Novella, just around the corner from elegant, boutique-lined Via Tornabuoni and 10 minutes’ walk from the Duomo and Ponte Vecchio.
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Thanks to a commanding position on the River Arno, right next to the Ponte Vecchio, the Portrait Firenze is possibly the best located hotel in Florence. The modern Italian designer interiors in greys, creams, whites and browns are elegant and inoffensive. Rugs cover wooden floors and large lamps abound. Staff, who are available around the clock, are attentive and exceptionally helpful. Technology is used extensively but unobtrusively in the rooms, the lifts (take a selfie on the in-lift iPad, or choose the music) and in the foyer.
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It’s a feast of exposed-stone walls, beams, vaults and arched windows, with a sixth-century circular tower and historic church at the heart of the structure. The modern Baroque décor – classy and uncluttered – includes artfully placed antiques and contemporary pieces, and shimmers with ornate gilt mirrors and pearly Murano chandeliers. For a city-centre pad, it’s perfectly placed: just two minutes’ walk to the Duomo complex and a four-minute amble to Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi. The hotel’s entrance is in a secluded square, around which chic wine bars jostle with traditional Florentine street-food stalls.
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Though it’s part of the Spanish NH hotel chain, the Porta Rossa manages to maintain much of its Florentine charm. The décor is Euro-contemporary, but traces of 19th-century frescoes on the walls and ceilings, and on roof beams in some of the grander rooms, boost the character quotient. There are 72 rooms, all of them done out in creams and beiges with dark polished wooden fixtures and occasional splashes of startling scarlet in sofas and armschairs. The Torre Monalda suite, in a 12th-century tower with a 360-degree view over Florence and its surroundings, is the hotel’s pièce de résistance.
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Imagine that an Italian count invited you to stay at his Florence palazzo: that’s Niccolini in a nutshell (the only hitch being that you have to pay – oh, and that the owner is a marchese, not a conte). Dating mostly from the 18th century – and built on the site of Donatello’s sculpture workshop – the palazzo is covered in top to toe frescoes, but the museum feel is offset by the fact that this is clearly a much-loved home. It’s so close to the Duomo – literally across the road – that Brunelleschi’s towers, buttresses and cupola fill up the view from the street-facing windows.
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No other hotel in Florence can boast such views. Terraces either face south over the river to the Oltrarno beyond or north towards the Duomo and the hills, so 360-degree panoramas are available to all guests. The location itself is, in a word, perfect. From this spot at the head of pedestrianised Via Tornabuoni – steps from the Arno and Ponte Santa Trinità – you can walk to the Ponte Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, the Uffizi and the Duomo within five to 10 minutes. Ferragamo, Prada, Gucci and Armani are all on the doorstep and there are and plenty of eating and drinking options nearby. The boho-chic Oltrarno neighbourhood is just across the bridge.
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Style hounds will lap up the sleek, clean lines and contemporary aesthetic of this design-led hotel, spread over five floors of two 15th-century aristocratic palazzi giving an interesting juxtaposition of old and new on the Via Tornabuoni. Italian design pieces from the likes of Morotti, Moroso and MDF Italia, splashes of colour and touches of humour save things from being too antiseptic. Palazzo Strozzi with its interesting programme of temporary exhibitions is practically next door and designer boutiques galore are on the doorstep.
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Based around the theme of watches sounds like a marketing gimmick, but in fact this attractive property, which belongs to a Florentine collector of timepieces, is one of the city’s best four-star choices. What really gives L’O substance is the handsome autumnal design scheme, which plays on materials like leather, vellum, bronze and cherrywood parquet. Imagine a stylish cigar-room transformed into a (non-smoking) hotel. A standout feature is the fourth-floor breakfast room with its bird’s-eye view of Piazza Santa Maria Novella: an area steeped in the beauty and atmosphere of Renaissance Florence.