I don’t just give you a place to stay. I share the Florence I know and love.

I was born and raised in Florence and have been welcoming travellers into my city for more than 11 years. I look after both apartments myself, from the first message to the moment you leave.

Before you arrive I send you everything you need for check-in. During your stay I am a WhatsApp message away, for a restaurant, a museum booking or directions to a quiet corner of the city.

Every Sunday I publish a weekly guide with the forecast, the week’s exhibitions and events, and walks that start from Piazza del Duomo.

What I love most about Florence is that you don’t need a ticket to enjoy it. Some mornings I walk from the Duomo to Sant’Ambrogio market just to buy bread and fruit and say hello at the stalls; on summer evenings I take the bus up to Piazzale Michelangelo and walk back down as the lights come on. Those are the moments I hope you’ll find too.

Petit Studio Duomo and Studio Duomo Michelangelo are homes I have furnished myself, in two historic palazzi a few steps from the cathedral. Write to me before you arrive with anything you need, from a restaurant for a special night to the quietest time to see the David, and I’ll answer personally.

Via Bufalini 14 · a few steps from the Duomo

You enter through a historic hall with stone arches and a checkerboard marble floor. Inside the apartment, the building shows its age in the best way: white-washed wooden beams, a skylight, herringbone parquet and a private terrace above the rooftops.

The Building

Your apartment is inside Palazzo Pasqui, a historic palazzo on the corner of Via Bufalini and Via dei Servi, about 100 metres from the Duomo. The oldest parts go back to the 14th century, when it was home to the Del Palagio family. The palazzo was later owned by the heirs of Folco Portinari, then by the Pasqui family, who gave it its name. Between 1838 and 1843 the architect Leopoldo Pasqui rebuilt it in its present form. He kept the medieval staircase, arches and the rusticated stone ground floor that you can still see on the street today.

The walls have seen a lot of art. From 1480 to 1498 the Renaissance sculptor and architect Benedetto da Maiano, who designed Palazzo Strozzi, had his workshops here. Later the painter Jacopo Chimenti, known as l’Empoli, had his studio here too. Look for the marble plaques on Via dei Servi.

Today the palazzo is the historic heart of 14•21 Firenze, a regeneration project covering a whole city block. The block runs from this 14th-century palazzo to an award-winning 1970s building and mixes homes, shops and public spaces. In 2022 the interiors of Palazzo Pasqui were completely renovated. The original wooden doors and period features were kept, and contemporary design and modern comforts were added. The project’s motto says it best: “A masterpiece born in the 14th century. Reborn in the 21st.”

Step outside and you’re in the open-air museum. Step back in and you’re living inside one.

Via Ricasoli 8 · between the Duomo and Piazza San Marco

Via Ricasoli links the Duomo to Piazza San Marco, with the Accademia and Michelangelo’s David around the corner. Petit Studio Duomo is on the third floor, reached by lift, with tall windows onto the street.

The Building

For sixty years this building was the home of La Nazione, Florence’s historic daily newspaper, founded in 1859 by Baron Bettino Ricasoli, the statesman who gave the street its name. His own palazzo stands on the same street, at number 9. Until 1966, Via Ricasoli 8 held the newsroom on the upper floors and the linotype machines and a printing press on the ground floor. The building even gained an extra storey to make room for the growing newsroom.

In August 1944, in the days of the Liberation of Florence, the journalists of La Nazione del Popolo, the newspaper of the Tuscan Liberation Committee, worked from the old stenographers’ room of this building. The first issue came out on 11 August 1944.

On 24 June 1966 the paper moved to its new modernist headquarters on Viale Giovine Italia, just months before the great flood of November 1966. Since then the old newspaper building has been converted into homes. The original façade on Via Ricasoli has been kept exactly as it was, and a lift now takes you up to the studio.

Look out from the shared corridor on the first floor: beyond the wall of the large inner courtyard, now fully restored, Brunelleschi’s Dome rises above the rooftops, close enough to count the ribs. It’s a magnificent, private view of the Duomo. It’s a quiet corner of Florence that few visitors ever get to enjoy.

You’re sleeping where Florence’s news was written for sixty years.