Four Seasons Firenze – Medici frescoes behind an 11-acre garden

Four Seasons Hotel Firenze occupies two adjoining Renaissance palaces on Borgo Pinti, a few minutes from the Sant'Ambrogio market in central Florence, their stuccoed facades giving no hint of what lies behind them. Palazzo della Gherardesca was built in 1473 by the Renaissance scholar Bartolomeo Scala and later passed through a Medici cardinal and the della Gherardesca family before opening as a Four Seasons hotel in June 2008. The house now counts 121 rooms, 76 of them guest rooms and 45 suites, spread between the Gherardesca palace and the adjoining Palazzo del Nero. The MICHELIN Guide places the hotel among its Three Key properties, its highest distinction, and inside, the restaurant Il Palagio carries one MICHELIN Star, earned under chef Paolo Lavezzini, who trained through European Michelin kitchens before running a restaurant in São Paulo for a decade. Few addresses in the city let guests dine beneath restored frescoes one evening and walk a private Renaissance garden the next morning.

01The house

Palazzo della Gherardesca is the older of the two buildings: raised in 1473 by Bartolomeo Scala, chancellor to Lorenzo de' Medici, it was later home to a Medici cardinal and to the noble della Gherardesca family before Four Seasons restored it as a hotel. The restoration, completed for the opening in June 2008, was overseen by the Florentine firms Studio Noferi and Studio Magris & Partners, with interiors throughout designed by Pierre-Yves Rochon.

Palazzo del Nero has a stranger history: built on land that once belonged to Florence's Wool Guild, it was remodelled in the seventeenth century by Baron Filippo del Nero, enlarged again in the eighteenth, passed to the Ruspoli family, and for a time housed a neo-Gothic church before joining the hotel. It now holds a share of the hotel's rooms, including the Presidential Suite, together with the restaurant Onde and the vermouth bar Bar Berni.

02Rooms and suites

Of the hotel's 121 rooms, 45 are suites, several carved from the original apartments of the Gherardesca and del Nero families. The Royal Suite della Gherardesca, once the nobles' own quarters, keeps its painted vaulted ceilings, Capodimonte-style ceramic floors and seventeenth-century frescoes framing views over the park.

Insider tip

10–15 minutes on foot from the Duomo, Uffizi and Accademia; entrance on Borgo Pinti.

The Garden Suite occupies the former limonaia, or lemon house, of Palazzo del Nero, with a private seasonal pool and a terrace onto its own walled garden, while the bi-level Duomo View Executive Suite opens its upstairs sitting room onto the cathedral's dome and the rooftops beyond. Guest rooms are split between the Four Seasons Room, with a separate living area, and the Premier Room, both furnished in Pierre-Yves Rochon's Renaissance-inflected palette.

03Where to eat

Il Palagio, the hotel's dining room, occupies the ground floor of Palazzo della Gherardesca under restored frescoes, with a summer terrace opening onto the garden; the kitchen holds one MICHELIN Star in the 2026 Italy guide. It has been led since August 2021 by chef Paolo Lavezzini, from Emilia-Romagna, who spent seven years at Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence and worked under Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée in Paris before running kitchens in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. His tasting menus draw on Tuscan produce; a signature dish pairs Casentino lamb from the Fracassi farm with celeriac, black garlic and liquorice. On Sundays, the room becomes the stage for a buffet brunch amid the palazzo's frescoes.

Onde, the hotel's coastal restaurant in Palazzo del Nero, serves Mediterranean seafood with shared plates and raw dishes in a room with nightly DJ sets, while by the pool, Al Fresco and Pool Tree Bar grills meat and fish over Josper coals and turns out handmade pizza once the sun goes down; in October 2026 both were listed as temporarily closed on the hotel's own website.

04The bar

The Atrium Bar fills the hotel's sky-lit fifteenth-century atrium, an all-day lounge designed by Pierre-Yves Rochon that moves from classic afternoon tea to a Florentine aperitivo, with negronis mixed table-side from a drinks trolley.

Bar Berni, set inside Palazzo del Nero, takes its name from Bernardo del Nero, founder of the noble house that gave the palace its name, and pours vermouth cocktails against a botanical-patterned interior overlooking the garden.

05Spa and garden

The Spa occupies 791 square metres within the grounds, with 10 treatment rooms, a sauna, a steam bath and a separate fitness centre; its signature Renaissance Flowers ritual uses preparations from the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella alongside Rephase, Sodashi and Mimi Luzon. Couples can book a separate Spa Suite with its own soaking tub carved from a single block of pietra serena sandstone.

All of it sits inside the Giardino della Gherardesca, a four-and-a-half-hectare garden planted in the fifteenth century with statues, fountains and a small Ionic temple – one of the largest private gardens left in the city, closed to outsiders for centuries before the hotel opened its gates. A heated outdoor pool and whirlpool sit among the trees for guests to use through the year.

06The neighbourhood

Borgo Pinti sits in Sant'Ambrogio, Florence's old market quarter, 10 to 15 minutes on foot from the Duomo, the Uffizi and Michelangelo's David in the Accademia. The hotel has featured repeatedly among the world's best: No. 9 on The World's 50 Best Hotels in 2025, and No. 12 on the same list in 2026, its fourth consecutive year on the ranking.

07Making the most of a stay

Book Il Palagio well ahead for a terrace table in the warmer months, when dinner moves outdoors to face the garden; the kitchen also stages a tasting menu inside the hotel's frescoed Renaissance chapel, and, in summer, a private dinner on the Ponte Vecchio's only terrace, reserved for hotel guests and lit by the evening light over the Arno.

The Spa's outdoor hot tub stays open year-round in the garden, and guided yoga classes run in the studio or among the old trees each morning – a quiet start before the walk into the Duomo crowds.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.