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Cross the Arno from the crowds around the Duomo and you reach the palace where the Medici grand dukes actually lived. The Pitti Palace began as a banker's house, was bought by Eleonora di Toledo in 1549/1550, and now holds several museums under one roof. Behind it, the Boboli Gardens climb the hillside across more than 30 hectares of avenues, fountains and grottoes. One combined ticket covers both, and many visitors run out of time for the garden.
We at Travelmyth, the hotel search engine that ranks stays by your interests and needs across 60 stay categories, have put together this guide to the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens so you can plan your time properly. It is two very different visits in one ticket: room after room of painting and decoration indoors, then a sculpted hillside garden out the back. Below we cover the palace and its museums, what to look for in the garden, the Bardini Garden next door, and how the tickets and hours work as of 2026.
The palace was commissioned in 1458 by Luca Pitti, a Florentine banker, as a grand private house. Around 1550 it was bought by Eleonora di Toledo and her husband Cosimo I de' Medici, who made it the new grand-ducal residence. Vasari attributed the original design to Brunelleschi, but that has never been historically proven, and today the architect Luca Fancelli is generally credited instead.
From the Medici the palace passed to the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, was used by Napoleon, and then served the Savoy Kings of Italy, who lived in it from 1865. In 1919 it was donated to the Italian State. The principal block alone covers about 32,000 square metres, which is part of why a single visit rarely takes in everything inside.
The Pitti Palace is not one museum but several. The headline is the Palatine Gallery, hung in the old state rooms with a significant core of works by Raphael and Titian. Alongside it are the Royal Apartments, kept much as the palace's royal residents left them.
The rest spreads across the building: the Treasury of the Grand Dukes, the Museum of Costume and Fashion with thousands of pieces, the Gallery of Modern Art, the Museum of Russian Icons and the Palatine Chapel. You do not need to see all of them in one go, and trying to is the main reason people leave the garden for another day. If your time is short, the Palatine Gallery is the part most visitors come for.
Behind the palace, the Boboli Gardens were laid out from the mid-16th century for Eleonora di Toledo and Cosimo I. The work was begun by Niccolò Tribolo, who died in 1550, and continued by Bartolomeo Ammannati and Bernardo Buontalenti. The result is one of the earliest formal Italian gardens, climbing Boboli Hill across more than 30 hectares.
The garden is generally said to have opened to the public in 1766. It is a designed landscape rather than a flower garden: avenues, terraces, statuary and water, arranged so that the layout itself, and the views back over the city, are the point.
Start with the amphitheatre that rises directly behind the palace, a green bowl cut into the slope. At its centre stands an ancient Egyptian obelisk, placed there around 1789-1790, which gives the space an unexpected focal point.
Higher up and tucked to one side is the Buontalenti Grotto, an artificial cave dripping with sculpted rockwork. Elsewhere in the garden you will find the Neptune fountain, the Kaffeehaus pavilion built for taking coffee with a view, and, at the far end of the long central avenue, the Isolotto, an oval island set in an ornamental pond. Walking between them is what fills the time here, so allow more than you think.
A short walk away is the Bardini Garden, a smaller terraced garden that is usually covered by the same combined ticket. Its best-known feature is a wisteria pergola about 70 metres long.
The wisteria usually blooms in April and May, often around mid-April to early May depending on the season, when the pergola turns into a tunnel of hanging purple flowers, so if you are visiting Florence in that window it is worth timing the Bardini for it. At any time of year the garden's terraces give a wide view back over the city.
As of 2026, the Pitti Palace ticket costs 16 euros on the day of entry, or 19 euros if bought in advance, and the Boboli Gardens ticket costs 10 euros on the day or 13 euros in advance. The combined Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens ticket costs 22 euros on the day or 25 euros in advance, includes the Bardini Garden, and is valid for one day.
There is also a five-day cumulative pass covering the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens for 40 euros, which makes sense if you are seeing the Uffizi on the same trip. The Boboli Gardens are free on the first Sunday of the month.
As of 2026, the Pitti Palace is open Tuesday to Sunday from 8:15 to 18:30, closed Mondays, January 1 and December 25. The Boboli Gardens open from 8:15, with seasonal closing times, and are closed on the first and last Monday of each month and on December 25, with last admission one hour before closing. Note that some rooms or collections may be closed on the day, so it is worth checking the latest notices before you go.
Because the combined ticket is valid for a single day, the practical question is whether you can fit both in. The palace and its museums easily absorb a couple of hours, and the garden wants a similar amount on top, so treat the pair as the better part of a day rather than a quick stop, and do the indoor part first while you are fresh.
Both the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens sit in the Oltrarno, the quarter on the south bank of the Arno, which makes it a natural base if these are high on your list. Staying on this side of the river puts you within an easy walk of the palace gates, a little away from the busiest streets of the centre while still close to everything across the bridges.
When you start thinking about where to base yourself, Travelmyth lists stays across Florence and lets you filter by what matters to your trip, whether that is a boutique-style room in the Oltrarno, somewhere with a pool for the summer, or a stay taking steps towards sustainability. You can browse the options at Travelmyth's Florence page and combine two filters to narrow it down.
If you are planning the rest of your time in the city, the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens are one stop among many, and we set them in context in our full guide to things to do in Florence.