Stibbert Museum

Stibbert Museum tickets: €12 from the museum itself

A full ticket to the Stibbert Museum costs €12, and the museum sells it itself, at the desk on the Montughi hill or through the ticket office on its website. We don’t sell one of our own, but the Firenze Card, further down, includes entry.

At weekends the city’s tourist portal strongly recommends booking, though it isn’t compulsory. With groups of up to 25 leaving on the hour in winter, a booked place is the safer way to be sure of the time you want. The ticket desk is on +39 055 475520 and at biglietteria@museostibbert.it.

Families should know that the Stibbert belongs to the city of Florence, not the Italian state. The free entry for under-18s at the state museums, such as the Uffizi, doesn’t apply here: from the age of 5, children pay the €8 reduced ticket.

The free tickets are sold only at the desk, and staff can ask for proof of any reduction or free entry, so bring an ID for each person. Guided visits for a group of your own, up to 25 people, are booked ahead with the museum: €60 plus tickets, or €150 plus tickets with a curator or in another language.

The Stibbert Museum on the Firenze Card: entry included

The Firenze Card, Florence’s official museum card, includes entry to the Stibbert, and it’s the only pass that does. It lasts 72 hours from the first museum you go into and covers about 60 museums and sites, each once. At the Stibbert you don’t have to book a time with it, as you do at the Uffizi or the Accademia. You buy it through GetYourGuide.

For a family, the card goes further here than at the state museums. Under-18s in the cardholder’s family go in with them, while at the desk every child from 5 pays €8.

The Stibbert counts as €12 towards the card’s €94, and the card starts to pay off from five or six paid museums; with the Uffizi and the Accademia alone, it doesn’t. It doesn’t include the Duomo either. The other passes, such as the Uffizi Passepartout, leave the Stibbert out, and Firenze Card and Florence’s other passes compares them all if you’re weighing it up.

Stibbert Museum opening hours: closed on Thursdays, groups on the hour in winter

The Stibbert keeps short days at the start of the week, so from Monday to Wednesday you only have the morning. Plan a long visit, with the park, for Friday to Sunday.

From the first Sunday of November to the first Sunday of April, the museum doesn’t let visitors walk round on their own. Every visit is in a group of up to 25, accompanied by a member of staff, and the groups set off every hour.

Who Frederick Stibbert was, and how his villa became a museum

The groups walk you through what was one man’s home. Frederick Stibbert (1838–1906) had an English father and an Italian mother, was educated in England and never needed a job: the family money came from his grandfather, Giles Stibbert, commander-in-chief of the East India Company in Bengal.

He spent his life collecting, and to fit it all in he had the villa enlarged. The architect was Giuseppe Poggi, who remodelled Florence when it was Italy’s capital, with the painter Gaetano Bianchi and the sculptor Passaglia on the new rooms. Stibbert opened the house to the public in 1887.

When he died, in 1906, he left the villa to the British state, which in 1908 handed it to the Comune di Firenze, the city council. It has been one of the city’s museums ever since.

Inside the Stibbert Museum: the Sala della Cavalcata and the samurai armour

Stibbert’s house has 57 rooms, and the armour in them comes from Europe, the Islamic world and Japan, made between the 15th and the 19th centuries. On the way round you go from the Islamic Room into the Sala della Cavalcata and on to the Sala del Condottiero.

The Sala della Cavalcata is the hall where the armour rides. Fourteen 16th-century knights sit on armoured horses, and fourteen foot soldiers in armour stand with them, all at life size.

Japan has rooms of its own, with more than 80 suits of samurai armour and hundreds of swords. The Japanese armoury is up a spiral staircase, and one guide to the city says it’s shown only on booked visits, so if it’s the room you’re coming for, email the museum before you go.

Between the armour, the house is still a house. The walls are lined with leather and tapestries, and the rooms hold Stibbert’s paintings, furniture, porcelain, Tuscan crucifixes and Etruscan pieces.

The Stibbert park: pavilions, false ruins and an Egyptian temple

Outside, the villa’s park has pavilions, statues, false ruins and a small Egyptian temple. It’s reached from the gate at Via Stibbert 26, on gravel paths with slopes, and there’s a café and a bookshop for when you’re done.

Getting to the Stibbert Museum on the Montughi hill

The museum is out of the centre, on the Montughi hill to the north, at Via Federigo Stibbert 26, next to New York University’s La Pietra campus. From Santa Maria Novella station, the bus up there is the 4. If you take the tram instead, keep the route open on your phone: one visitor who got off at the terminus found nobody who knew the museum. If you’re coming by car or in a wheelchair, the museum sends you to a second entrance, on Via di Montughi.

In a wheelchair you can still see parts of both floors, though not the Japanese armoury, so call the desk before you go and ask which rooms your visit will reach.