Florence wakes up from winter at the start of March (although the festive season is something to behold), but don’t expect a quiet city. Already, crowds teem through the commercial centre, past the Duomo, with the Ponte Vecchio – which you must walk over at least once – an ongoing adrenaline-fueled exercise in crowd dodging. 

The weather is clement, hovering around 12°C but leave it until April to hit the sweet spot of both avoiding the masses and making the most of the warmer sunshine bouncing off the Renaissance architecture. Summer is busy. The city’s population is just 380,000, but up to 15.8 million visitors poured into these picturesque streets every year pre-Covid.