Botticelli, Caravaggio, Raphael — but also 3-hour lines and €20. The honest take.
Plan your Italy trip →Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera are here. You've seen them on posters, mugs, t-shirts, and phone cases your entire life. In person, they're 3 meters tall, the colors glow, and the brushwork detail is impossible to appreciate in any reproduction. This alone justifies the visit.
But there's also Leonardo's Annunciation (painted when he was 20), Caravaggio's Medusa and Bacchus, Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch, Titian's Venus of Urbino, and hundreds more works that any other museum would build an entire exhibition around.
It's enormous — 2-4 hours for highlights, a full day for everything. Your feet will protest. The Botticelli rooms are packed midday (10am-2pm). The building's Renaissance layout means long corridors with repetitive early Italian paintings that test casual visitors' patience before you reach the stars.
Book the 8:15am first slot. Go directly to Botticelli (Rooms 10-14) while everyone else starts at Room 1. Spend real time with the Birth of Venus before the room fills. Then work through Caravaggio, Leonardo, Raphael at your pace. The top-floor terrace café has a view of Piazza della Signoria — good coffee, needed break.
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