The Artisan Workshops
The Oltrarno has been the workshop district of Florence since the Renaissance, and it still is. Along Via Maggio and the streets branching from it, goldsmiths, furniture restorers, bookbinders, and frame-makers work in spaces that have changed very little in two centuries. The work is serious and the doors are often open; stopping to watch is both acceptable and rewarding. The Scuola del Cuoio — the leather school inside the convent of Santa Croce, technically across the river — is the most famous example of this tradition, but the Oltrarno has dozens of quieter equivalents.
Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens
The Palazzo Pitti, the vast Medici palace occupying an entire hillside above the Oltrarno, contains six museums across its 140 rooms — including the Palatine Gallery, with one of the finest concentrations of Raphael and Titian outside the Vatican. The Boboli Gardens behind it rise in terraced avenues of cypress and ilex to a panoramic view over Florence. Come for the gardens on a Tuesday or Thursday morning when the palace crowds are thinner. The Kaffeehaus pavilion at the top, originally built for Pietro Leopoldo, sells coffee with a view that justifies the climb.
Piazza Santo Spirito
The piazza of Santo Spirito is the social centre of the Oltrarno — an unrestored square with a plain façade of Brunelleschi's great church at one end and café tables spilling across the cobblestones. A small food market operates on Tuesday and Saturday mornings. The bars around the square serve the best aperitivo in the neighbourhood: a glass of Vermentino or Morellino di Scansano and a counter of small plates for the price of the drink. The fountain at the centre is occupied from noon onwards by students and locals who regard the square as a living room.
Eating in the Oltrarno
The Oltrarno is where Florentines eat when they don't want to perform for tourists. Il Santino, the wine bar attached to the legendary Il Santo Bevitore, serves extraordinary small plates and natural wines by the glass. Buca Mario on the Piazza Ottaviani is the oldest restaurant in Florence, operating since 1886. For the canonical Florentine tripe experience, the lampredotto cart at the Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio across the river is the benchmark — but the Oltrarno's trattorie serve versions equally good and far less crowded.
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