Florence Cathedral and Brunelleschi's Dome

Florence Duomo tickets: the free cathedral and the climbs you pay for

Walking into Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, costs nothing: there’s no ticket to buy and nothing to book. What you pay for is everything around it, from the climb up Brunelleschi’s dome and Giotto’s Bell Tower to the Baptistery, the Opera del Duomo Museum and Santa Reparata, the older church under the cathedral floor. And there’s no ticket for the dome on its own, because the dome always comes with the rest.

For the dome, our Premium Fast Track ticket costs €58. It gets you fast-track entrance to the dome and entry to the bell tower, the museum, the Baptistery and Santa Reparata, with someone to help you at the meeting point.

The fast track is for the dome’s entrance. It doesn’t change your climbing time, which is fixed on every dome ticket. And you don’t need it for the cathedral: the Opera, the body that runs the Duomo, warns that, since the cathedral is always free, a “skip the line” ticket for the cathedral alone sells you something you’d get at no cost.

If you’d rather skip the 463 steps of the dome, the ticket without the dome, at €29.90, covers Giotto’s Bell Tower, the Baptistery, the museum and Santa Reparata, and it has a child price of its own. For the cathedral with someone explaining it, the guided tour costs from €19 in English, with a headset to hear the guide. Since the cathedral is free, what you pay for there is the guide, and the tour doesn’t include the dome or the other monuments.

The dome ticket is in your name, and staff check it against an ID before you go up, so bring the document you booked with. The time is compulsory and can’t be moved, and none of these three tickets can be cancelled, so book the dome once your Florence dates are fixed.

Tickets with the dome run for three calendar days, counted from midnight of the day you choose for the dome, which has to be the first of the three. On a dome ticket the bell tower needs no booking: you climb it any time in those days. On the tickets without the dome, the bell tower has a time slot of its own.

Is the Duomo included in the Firenze Card or another pass?

The Firenze Card, Florence’s official museum card, doesn’t include the Duomo. The Opera says so itself, and the dome isn’t on the card’s list of about 60 museums. The Passepartout, the Uffizi’s ticket for the Uffizi, Pitti and Boboli, doesn’t cover it either, so with either of the two the dome is a ticket of its own.

The combo’s code only takes 10% off, and no pass includes the dome itself. Our ticket with the dome costs €58, and if you’re buying the Firenze Card for the museums, add it on top of the card. Our page on the Firenze Card and Florence’s other passes shows what each pass covers across the city.

Duomo opening hours, the November closures and what to wear

The cathedral and the climbs keep different hours, and the cathedral is the one with the shorter day: it opens at 10:15 and closes on Sundays. The climbs start earlier, at 8:15, except the dome on Sundays, which only opens at 12:45.

Two closures fall in November 2026: the bell tower shuts from 9 to 13 November and the dome from 16 to 20 November. The bell tower is also under restoration, with its terrace still open and the views partly blocked.

The same dress code applies in the cathedral, the Baptistery and the crypt. With a ticket for the monuments you go into the cathedral through the Porta del Campanile, the crypt entrance beside the bell tower, while visitors without one use the doors on the facade.

Climbing Brunelleschi’s dome: 463 steps to the terrace

The dome is 463 steps from bottom to top, with no lift, and the climb takes about 45 minutes. You climb between the dome’s inner and outer shells and come out on the terrace at the top, high over Piazza del Duomo.

That rules it out for anyone who can’t manage long stairs, and the bell tower is stairs only too. In that case the ticket without the dome still covers the Baptistery, the museum and Santa Reparata, with no tower or dome to climb.

Giotto’s Bell Tower, the Baptistery and the Duomo museum

The bell tower is the other climb, with its entrance at the back of the tower. Back in the cathedral, the inside is plainer than the marble outside, and under its floor lies Santa Reparata, the older basilica it replaced, which every ticket for the monuments covers.

The Baptistery of San Giovanni stands in front of the facade, and the mosaics of its vault are under restoration. Its east doors, Ghiberti’s gilded bronze Gates of Paradise, face the cathedral.

The doors you see there are a replica, and the original panels are in the Opera del Duomo Museum, with its entrance at Piazza del Duomo 9. The Opera suggests about 90 minutes for it. It’s on every ticket for the monuments, so it fits into the three days around your dome slot.

Getting to the Duomo

The Duomo stands on Piazza del Duomo, in Florence’s historic centre, and from Santa Maria Novella station you can walk there. If you’d rather ride, a city bus ticket has cost €2 since 1 August 2026.