Every Florentine story begins under Brunelleschi's dome, the one that solved a problem the ancients had given up on, and has been showing off about it since 1436.

Coffee at the marble counter, the campanile keeping the hour, and four million terracotta tiles glowing above your morning.

Across the river the city still works with its hands: gilders, bookbinders, framers, each behind a door left open exactly wide enough to watch.

There is a workshop where gold leaf is laid one breath at a time, and a legatoria where paper is marbled the way it was for the Medici.

Florence invented banking and then invented what to spend it on. On Tornabuoni the maisons live inside renaissance palazzi, and the doormen remember names for a living.

Behind one marble counter, an officina has been mixing the same waters and essences since 1612. Everything can be sent to your residence.

When the light drops, Florence comes down to the river. The goldsmiths of Ponte Vecchio light their little windows one by one, and the bridge doubles itself in the water.

Ask for the bench on the downstream side, the one where the whole evening arranges itself for you.

And then Florence does what Florence has always done: it composes itself. From San Miniato the cypresses frame the rooftops, the dome takes the centre, and the whole Renaissance sits inside one glance.