Official Information
Official website: https://museonovecento.it/
Online tickets: https://bigliettimusei.comune.fi.it/3_museo-novecento/
Address: Piazza di Santa Maria Novella 10, 50123 Firenze (FI), Italy
Map: View on Google Maps
Opening Hours
City museum; usually open most days from late morning to evening (for example 11:00–20:00), with one weekly closing day or reduced hours and some holiday closures. Hours can vary by season and events, so check the official Museo Novecento or Muse Firenze pages before you go.
Museo Novecento sits on one side of Piazza Santa Maria Novella, inside the former hospital of the Leopoldine, and focuses on Italian art of the 20th and early 21st centuries. If you associate Florence only with Botticelli and Michelangelo, this museum gives you a completely different angle on the city, showing how local and national artists responded to modernity, war and the avant-gardes. The permanent collection is arranged across several floors and follows broad themes rather than a strict chronology. You will encounter works by key Italian figures such as Giorgio Morandi, Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, alongside Tuscan and Florentine artists who shaped the local scene. Paintings, sculpture, installations, photography and video art are all represented, so it is a good place to recalibrate your eye after days of Renaissance altarpieces. Temporary exhibitions are a major part of the experience, often devoted to single artists or movements, and they can completely change the feel of the museum from year to year. The building itself has been carefully adapted, with clean white spaces, views onto the cloister and clever lighting that gives works room to breathe. Interpretation is generally strong, with bilingual labels and wall texts that situate Italian modern art in broader European currents without overwhelming you. For many visitors, the museum is also a way to understand how Florence reinvented itself in the 1900s, from Futurism and post-war abstraction to contemporary multimedia experiments. It is compact enough that you can see the highlights in an hour, though enthusiasts of modern art will easily spend longer. Thanks to its central location, Museo Novecento is easy to fold into a day that already includes Santa Maria Novella church, Via Tornabuoni or the train station area. Because it attracts fewer crowds than the Uffizi or Accademia, it can be a peaceful, air-conditioned refuge when the city feels hectic, and a reminder that Florence’s cultural story did not stop in the 16th century.