Oltrarno · Firenze
An evening in San Frediano
San Frediano is the part of the Oltrarno where Florentines still live and work: artisan workshops, neighborhood trattorias and wine bars, and the city’s old walls at the end of the street. Lonely Planet once named it the coolest neighborhood in the world. Here is an evening in it.
Before the first drink
Santa Maria del Carmine 5 min from Mysterium
The Brancacci Chapel inside this church holds the fresco cycle Masaccio and Masolino began in the 1420s and Filippino Lippi finished, one of the founding works of Renaissance painting. Check the chapel’s visiting hours before you go.
Porta San Frediano 3 min from Mysterium
The fourteenth-century gate in the old city walls closes the far end of Borgo San Frediano.
San Frediano in Cestello 5 min from Mysterium
The church with the pale dome on the Arno, best seen from the river walls at dusk.
Ponte alla Carraia 9 min from Mysterium
Stand on the bridge at sunset and look upstream: Ponte Santa Trinita, then Ponte Vecchio, catching the last light.
Piazza Santo Spirito 11 min from Mysterium
Brunelleschi’s plain-fronted basilica faces the Oltrarno’s liveliest square, busy with locals from aperitivo time onward.
Why cross the river
Most visitors stay between the Duomo and Ponte Vecchio and never see the other bank after dark. In San Frediano the evening belongs to the neighborhood: people out on the street, small bars and workshops, and Florentines rather than tour groups. The novelist Vasco Pratolini set Le ragazze di San Frediano here, and the neighborhood still has that character.
End the night at Mysterium
Mysterium opens at 6 pm, so it works as the first stop or the last: an aperitivo before dinner in the Oltrarno, or a nightcap until 1 am, and until 2 am on Fridays and Saturdays.
