The must-see exhibitions in Florence

All the must-see events

All the must-see art events in Florence.

Florence ’50 ’60 ’70 – Images from the Locchi Photo Archive at Villa Bardini (until October 18)

Through October 18, Villa Bardini is hosting Florence ’50 ’60 ’70. Images from the Locchi Photo Archive, a photographic exhibition that chronicles three decades of Florentine history through archival images. From the elegance and international vibrancy of the 1950s, through the transformations and upheavals of the 1960s, to the cultural and urban complexity of the 1970s, the exhibition traces the city’s evolution through memory, customs, and society.

Mostra Archivio Foto Locchi a Villa Bardini (Foto Locchi/©Archivio Foto Locchi)

Florence and the U.S.: The Story of a Friendship (until October 18)

Through October 18, the Bardini Garden in Florence is hosting the photography exhibition Florence and the U.S.: The Story of a Friendship, a journey through ten images from the Locchi Photo Archive that illustrate the deep historical, cultural, and solidarity-based bond between Florence and the United States. The exhibition, sponsored by the U.S. Consulate General in Florence and leading Florentine institutions, celebrates the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

Florence and the U.S. The Story of a Friendship

Cent’anni di Fiorentini. Cent’anni di Fiorentina (until September 13)

Through September 13, the Cortile di Michelozzo at Palazzo Vecchio is hosting an exhibition organized by ACF Fiorentina in collaboration with Archivio Foto Locchi, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Viola. The exhibition tells the story of Fiorentina from a different perspective: not that of trophies and great champions, but that of the fans and the city who, generation after generation, have stood by the team. The photographs, spanning from the 1930s to the mid-1990s, document Sundays at the stadium, away games, the streets of Florence, the neighborhoods, and moments shared together in front of the television. This narrative weaves Fiorentina’s history together with the social and cultural transformations of the city throughout the 20th century. A century of images that illustrate the relationship between Florence, its inhabitants, and Fiorentina, showing how soccer has become an integral part of the city’s identity over time.

Mostra Cent'anni di Fiorentini. Cent'anni di Fiorentina (foto credits Archivio Foto Locchi)

Baselitz. AVANTI! (until September 13)

The Museo Novecento in Florence presents Baselitz. AVANTI!, a major exhibition dedicated to one of the leading figures in contemporary art, organized in collaboration with the artist's studio.
For the first time in Italy, this wide-ranging exhibition focuses on a fundamental and often less explored aspect of Georg Baselitz's practice: engraving.
Spread over the museum's three floors, the exhibition brings together around 170 works, including prints, paintings, and sculptures, reflecting the complexity and radical nature of a career spanning over sixty years. The selected works illustrate the variety of themes addressed by the artist and reaffirm his idea of art as a process, transformation, and subversive gesture, far removed from any form of reassuring harmony.

BASELITZ OK

Please Take This Seriously at Gallery Hotel Art (until fall 2026)

Please Take This Seriously is the new exhibition by Roman artist Daniele Sigalot, hosted at the Gallery Hotel Art in Florence and open to the public free of charge through fall 2026. Curated by Valentina Ciarallo, the exhibition invites the public to reflect on the fine line between seriousness and irony, a central theme in the artist’s work. Through site-specific pieces, iconic works, and new installations, Sigalot transforms everyday objects into monumental and surprising presences. Among the works on display are the famous lacquered aluminum Post-it notes, the interactive piece The Ping Pong Paradox, and a series of stainless steel paper airplanes with reflective surfaces. The exhibition thus offers a reflection on the meaning of contemporary art, its value, and the mechanisms that govern the cultural system, engaging the viewer in an open dialogue rich in paradoxes.

Mostra Please Take This Seriously al Gallery Art Hotel

Ottone Rosai. Poeta innanzitutto (until October 4)

The exhibition begins with a comparison between the paintings from the Rosai Bequest and the artist's works from the Alberto Della Ragione Collection, brought together for the first time in a single exhibition. Divided into two distinct areas, the exhibition allows visitors to explore the figures and places dear to Ottone Rosai (Florence, 1895 – Ivrea, 1957), providing a complex picture of the painter and his relationship with his city and the intellectuals of his time. The exhibition is completed by a selection of documents from the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G.P. Vieusseux, Archivio Contemporaneo Alessandro Bonsanti. The exhibition also constitutes an important link between the Florentine civic collections and the figure of Georg Baselitz, who will soon be the subject of a major exhibition at the Museo Novecento. Baselitz is in fact a great admirer of Ottone Rosai, whose works he discovered during his first stay in Florence in 1965.

Ottone Rosai Ph Leonardo Morfini

Inferno - Esperienza Immersiva nella Divina Commedia di Dante at Cattedrale dell'Immagine (until November 15)

Through November 15, 2026, the Cattedrale dell'Immagine transforms into a true sensory portal into Dante’s Inferno. The new immersive exhibition INFERNO – An Immersive Experience in the Divine Comedy takes the public to the heart of Dante Alighieri’s poetic universe through an experience that combines digital art, virtual reality, and state-of-the-art multimedia installations. The journey unfolds as an emotional descent through the circles of Hell, amid monumental sets and immersive environments that give visual form to the verses of the Comedy. From the Dark Forest to the City of Dite, all the way to the ninth circle, visitors are accompanied by Dante and Virgil in an experience that blends storytelling, light, and sound, bringing to life the full imaginative power of the poem. Alongside the main installation, a VR experience stands out in the historic Coro area, conceived as a shared journey through 13th-century Florence and Dante’s imagination. A project that does not merely recount Dante, but reinterprets him as a living, contemporary, and deeply immersive experience.

Inferno, Cattedrale dell'Immagine

Fall Exhibitions

Broken. The Power of the Fragment (September 25, 2026 – January 24, 2027)

The Palazzo Strozzi Foundation presents Broken. The Power of the Fragment, a major exhibition exploring the theme of the fragment from archaeology to contemporary art, celebrating the evocative power and fascination it has held for humanity from antiquity to the present day. Curated by C. D. Dickerson and Andrew Sears and organized in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it will be presented in the spring of 2027, the exhibition brings together over ninety works spanning different centuries and cultural contexts, highlighting both the formal power of the fragment and the complex historical narratives they embody. The selection spans the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesoamerica, Etruria, and Greece, extending to premodern and early modern cultures, from Peru to Cambodia. Alongside masterpieces from the past, the exhibition also features works by modern and contemporary artists who have taken the fragment as a starting point for new expressive possibilities, including Auguste Rodin, Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois, Huma Bhabha, Francesco Vezzoli, and Danh Vo. The exhibition explores the reasons and circumstances that led to the breaking or fragmentation of sculptures, from ancient and modern iconoclasm to wars, from vandalism to natural disasters and forces of nature. The exhibition takes visitors through pivotal moments in history, from ancient shipwrecks to the Protestant Reformation, from World War II to the flood that struck Florence in 1966, offering a broad reflection on the political significance these works have acquired through their breakage or fragmentation. The exhibition is organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.