Tower houses, warring factions, plagues, floods, intrigue, power, money and poetry: this is Dante’s Florence. Our walk takes us into this world and into some of the Sommo Poeta’s haunts, including Santa Croce, the Badia Fiorentina, Dante’s “house” and church, Torre della Castagna, Palazzo Portinari, Torre dei Donati and the Baptistery. Along the way, we will read passages from the Divine Comedy and try to immerse ourselves in Dante’s world and poetry. The suggested itinerary is three hours and the tour price excludes entrance fees to the various museums.

Florence has a centuries-long tradition of Christian confraternities providing social services to the city’s disenfranchised. For wealthy citizens concerned about the future of their souls, confraternities provided an excellent opportunity to expiate or do penance for their sins. This visit begins at the Museum of the Misericordia—the city’s oldest continuous charitable organization—before moving to the Bigallo Museum, which houses an ancient depiction of the city dating to the 14th century. We then visit Oratory of San Martino where Domenico Ghirlandaio’s assistants frescoed scenes of the Seven Works of Mercy for the charitable confraternity of the Buonomini. These frescoes depict evocative images of the everyday life of Florence’s “shame-faced poor” within the context of the confraternity’s dedication to Christian charity. We will then progress to Piazza Santissima Annunziata, home to an important 15th century “buca”—a confraternity dedicated to prayer, social work, and even entertainment. The visit will end at the most imposing and famous example of Florentine charity, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, an orphanage financed by the Silk Guild and designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in the early 1400s.