A man wakes up in a Florence hospital with a head wound and no memory. Then an assassin comes for him, and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, helps him escape. That's how Dan Brown's Inferno begins, the 2013 novel that sends Robert Langdon running across Florence, chasing a riddle built out of Dante. Ron Howard made it into a film in 2016, with Tom Hanks as Langdon. This walk follows the novel's escape in its own order, from the city gate where the two of them try to get back into the old city, over the river by a secret corridor, to the palace where Langdon learns what he did the night before, and on to the station where the chase leaves town. At each stop you'll also meet the real Dante behind the thriller: the man who was born and baptised here, banished on pain of being burned, and never came home. Spoilers throughout. This is an unofficial walk, not made with or endorsed by Dan Brown, his publishers or the filmmakers. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 3.1 kilometers from Porta Romana to Florence's main station.

Before you set off

The walking takes about 41 minutes for the 3.1 kilometers. With time at each stop, allow an hour and a half, more if you go inside anywhere. City buses stop at Porta Romana on Viale Petrarca, and the walk ends at the station, with trains and trams. The route is flat, on stone paving and narrow sidewalks, and it gets crowded around the Ponte Vecchio and the cathedral, so keep your bag close.

Every stop on this walk is free to see from the outside, and that's where we'll stand. Several places from the book are inside paid sites: the Boboli Gardens and their grotto, the Hall of the Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio, the inside of the Baptistery, and the Dante house museum. The Vasari Corridor itself can now be visited again, by booked timed ticket through the Uffizi. Prices and hours change, so check before you go.

Porta Romana

You're at Porta Romana, the Roman Gate, the southern gate in Florence's old walls. Look at the tall stone gate itself. It was built in 1326 for the last ring of city walls, and it still has its original wooden doors. On the left side, an inscription from 1327 can still be read. On the roundabout in front of it stands a modern sculpture by Michelangelo Pistoletto called Dietrofront. It shows two female figures: one stands upright facing south, toward Rome, and the other lies horizontal, upside down on her head, pointing at the city. Pistoletto showed it at the Forte Belvedere in 1984 and gave it to the city in 2000.

In the novel, this gate is the way back into the old city. Langdon and Sienna have fled the hospital. He has a head wound, he can't remember how he got it, and someone is trying to kill him. The plan is simple: get through the gate and into the historic center. But when they reach it, they find it watched. They need another way in.

The book has fun with the neighbourhood. Near the gate is an art institute, and the novel gives it a Medici origin. In fact it was a royal commission of the 1800s. It's a small slip, but a useful warning for the rest of the walk. Dan Brown loves real places, and he doesn't always keep them as he found them.

So Langdon and Sienna choose the back door: the Boboli Gardens, the old Medici gardens behind the Pitti Palace. Boboli even has one of its ticketed entrances here on the Porta Romana square. We'll take the street instead. Head northeast along Via Romana, the long straight road leading away from the gate toward the center. Where it ends, at the little Piazza San Felice, keep going a few steps and the wide sloping square in front of the Pitti Palace opens up on your right. About ten minutes.

Pitti Palace and Boboli

Palazzo Pitti from the Boboli Gardens side, Florence

You're in Piazza Pitti, in front of the Pitti Palace, the huge stone palace of the Medici grand dukes. The square is free and open. Behind the palace, climbing the hill, are the Boboli Gardens, which have their own ticketed entrances.

In the novel, Langdon and Sienna cross Boboli unseen and make for its far end, here near the palace. Their goal is the Buontalenti Grotto, an artificial cave at the garden's north end, inside the gardens and just out of sight from where you stand. They hide inside it, then slip into the Vasari Corridor, a hidden passage whose door is right beside the grotto.

The grotto is real, and it's stranger than the novel lets on. It began as a water reservoir. Between 1583 and 1587 the architect Bernardo Buontalenti turned it into a three-room grotto for Francesco I de' Medici. Michelangelo's four Prisoners once stood in its corners. They were moved to the Accademia gallery in 1908 and replaced with replicas. In the third room stands a Venus by Giambologna, from around 1593.

Here's the twist the book can't tell you. The real Vasari Corridor runs one way only for visitors, from the Uffizi gallery to Boboli. You walk across the river and come out through the door next to the grotto. So Langdon's escape runs in the opposite direction to the one every real visitor takes. In real life, he would be the only person in the corridor going the wrong way.

The film shot here too: Ron Howard's crew filmed in the Boboli Gardens and in the Vasari Corridor itself.

From here the corridor heads for the river, and so do we. Leave the square at its lower end and walk north-east along Via de' Guicciardini, straight toward the Arno, until you reach the bridge lined with shops. About five minutes.

Ponte Vecchio

You're on the Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge, lined with tiny jewellers' shops. Find a spot out of the crowd and look up. Above the shops on one side runs a continuous row of small windows. That's the Vasari Corridor, the passage Langdon and Sienna use in the novel to cross the Arno without ever touching the street.

It was built fast and for a family occasion. In 1565 Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned it for the wedding of his son Francesco to Joanna of Austria. It took five months to build. It runs 760 meters, from the Uffizi to the Buontalenti Grotto, so the grand dukes could pass safely between the Pitti Palace and the Palazzo Vecchio, high above the people of Florence. It has 73 windows.

For years almost nobody could walk it. The corridor closed in 2016, the same year the film came out, and reopened on the 21st of December 2024. Today you can walk it by booked, timed slot through the Uffizi, in small groups, one way from the Uffizi to Boboli.

The shops below have their own story. In 1593 Ferdinando I de' Medici allowed only goldsmiths and jewellers on the bridge, replacing the butchers who had worked here before. And on the night of the 3rd to the 4th of August 1944, the Night of the Bridges, the retreating German army blew up every other bridge in Florence. They spared this one.

In the novel, the corridor delivers Langdon and Sienna into the heart of political Florence, the old town hall, where a shock is waiting. Cross to the north bank and walk straight on up Via Por Santa Maria, then turn right on Via Vacchereccia into Piazza della Signoria, with the palace tower ahead. About four minutes.