The Renaissance, within walking distance

Florence is small enough to learn in a day and deep enough to return to for years. The historic centre is little more than two kilometres across, and much of it was paid for by wool and banking between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The cathedral dome, completed by Brunelleschi in 1436, still sets the scale: nothing in the city rises above it.

The south bank of the Arno, the Oltrarno, keeps a slower rhythm. Bookbinders, gilders and shoemakers still work behind open doors around Santo Spirito, and in the evening the neighbourhood gathers on the square in front of one of Brunelleschi’s last churches. From there it is a steady climb to Piazzale Michelangelo and the Romanesque façade of San Miniato al Monte, with the whole city laid out below at sunset.

Eating here is plain and good: bread baked without salt, new olive oil, white beans, a thick T-bone steak grilled over embers, and tripe sandwiches from carts that have fed market workers for generations. Book the main museums ahead in any season, start early, and keep the afternoons for the churches, cloisters and gardens where nobody has to queue.