Basilica of Santa Maria Novella Guided Tour with Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella Visit

Explore Florence's Basilica of Santa Maria Novella and its perfume heritage on an architecture and fragrance guided tour.

Getting started

Meet your licensed tour guide at the agreed starting point and join your small-group or private experience, depending on the option selected. After a brief introduction to the route, you begin with entry to the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella using your entrance ticket. From here, you follow your guide on a walking route that links the basilica to the nearby Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella.

What to expect

Basilica of Santa Maria Novella

This guided visit of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella introduces you to one of Florence's key religious sites and its Dominican heritage. Inside, your expert guide focuses on how Renaissance art, theology, and daily monastic life connect.

Features

• Masaccio’s Holy Trinity and other Renaissance frescoes are highlighted so you can see how perspective, symbolism, and religious stories transformed Florentine painting inside the basilica.
• Entry to the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella is included as part of your guided visit, giving you structured access to its artistic treasures rather than a self-guided walk-through.
• During the guided visit of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, your expert, licensed tour guide explains the role of the Dominicans and how the church's architecture and artworks reflect their spiritual and intellectual priorities.
• An introduction to Dominican history, art, and perfume shows how religious study, medicinal herbs, and artistic commissions intersected in this community.

Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella

Your tour continues with a visit to the historic Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, long associated with Dominican remedies and essences. Here, the focus shifts from architecture to centuries-old traditions of herbs, remedies, essences, and perfumes.

Features

• Inside the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, you see spaces linked to the production of remedies and fragrances, connecting what you learned in the basilica to practical Dominican medicine.
• The visit to Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella is included, giving you time to observe how Florentine perfume heritage developed from monastic experimentation.
• Your guide offers an introduction to perfume that traces the connection between Renaissance art, Dominican medicine, and Florentine perfume, framing scents and essences as part of the same cultural world as the basilica's artworks.
• While this experience includes an overview of perfume traditions, it does not include a perfume-making workshop, so your time here is focused on history, observation, and storytelling rather than hands-on creation.