Florence stands apart in a world of global brands and standardised stores. It never fully surrendered its workshops to mass production; the old guild principles of apprenticeship, technical mastery and pride in the object over the brand still shape how the city makes and sells.
It is a place of art and makers: leather craftsmen, clothing designers, ceramicists, restorers, bookbinders and gilders, many of them working in family businesses spanning generations. They aren’t driven by global budgets and strategy sessions but by skills passed down.
The city is world famous for its leather goods, hand-marbled paper, gold jewellery from the Ponte Vecchio, and artisanal perfumes. Centuries of craft have produced a dense ecosystem of workshops — botteghe — where making, teaching and selling all happen in the same space, a tradition dating back to the Renaissance guilds.
The craft traditions
You’ll still find Florentine marbled paper — carta marmorizzata —with its swirling patterns in bookbinders and stationers across the city. Restorers conserve Renaissance frescoes, re-gild picture frames, repair antique furniture and refresh gold leaf on altarpieces. Meanwhile, mass-produced “Florentine leather” sold in tourist-facing shops undercuts the real thing on the price front and blurs the line for buyers who don’t know the difference.
Some of the fashion houses that trace their roots to Florence, such as Gucci, Ferragamo and Pucci, still source finishing work from small ateliers. Design schools bring students to apprentice alongside master goldsmiths, and cultural foundations run public workshops. What it means is that in Florence craft has never been separated from art, commerce or civic identity and remains woven into the life of the city.
We visited a handful of these makers to see what’s on offer.
The lie of the land
There are two main hubs for exploring this magical realm: the Santa Croce complex, where old monastery buildings now house working ateliers, and the Oltrarno neighbourhood, which can be reached via the Ponte Vecchio or Ponte Santa Trinita and has been Florence’s artisan quarter since the Middle Ages.
In the Oltrarno, small workshops occupy the same narrow storefronts their predecessors did generations ago. Restorers of antique furniture work alongside frame gilders; bookbinders stitch leather covers by hand. Some ateliers have been run by the same family for five or six generations, with tools passed down like heirlooms and client books filled with names going back decades. The district is now recognised as one of the densest surviving concentrations of living craft trades in Europe, and local initiatives work to keep rents low enough for young craftspeople to afford to open a shop.
Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella
This is the oldest operating pharmacy in Europe, with roots going back 800 years. People queue from early on, and the staff manages the number of people who get to enter in one go. It’s like walking into a time capsule that’s been expertly maintained.
Frescoed rooms, carved walnut cabinets, marble floors, crystal chandeliers and centuries-old apothecary jars set the scene for perfumes, soaps and candles displayed in large glass cabinets and dark wood cases. It’s an adeptly managed business, with a range of things visitors can buy on site, from skincare to fragrance and body products and some homeware options like candles and diffusers.
The company has grown into a global luxury fragrance house with boutiques in Milan, Paris, London, New York, Seoul and Tokyo. It’s positioned as a heritage maison rather than a mass-market luxury brand, and a little gift of beautifully packaged lemon hand cream or Melograno hand soap is a real spoil.
Scuola del Cuoio
Inside the Santa Croce monastery, in rooms that were once dormitories (some with architecture linked to Michelozzo and historic frescoes), the Scuola del Cuoio is one of the city’s authentic Florentine leather shops. It has never become a mass-market brand, and still trains new leather craftsmen. The school was founded after World War 2 to teach leatherworking to war orphans and give them a trade; the Gori family has run it ever since and is now in the hands of its third and fourth generations.
The FM came across the lovely and engaging Isabella expertly hand-stitching a bag, chatting as she did so. She’s a fourth-generation craftswoman, has been working at the family business since she was 16 and has studied art at university as well.
Iconic pieces in the business’s collection include the Laura bag; the Francesca Gori Collection, hand-stitched and embellished with semi-precious stones and vintage jewellery; and the Classic Woven Nappa Collection, sometimes mistaken for Bottega Veneta products, woven strip by strip entirely by hand.
Don’t expect discount prices, but do expect the real thing: you can watch artisans at work, and have any purchase branded on the spot — in gold, silver, or understated “blind” embossing, done with traditional heated brass letters. Utterly memorable and on the list for a return visit.
Other smaller ateliers worth seeking out
La Bottega di Fiorenza, near the central market, is a small ceramics workshop specialising in hand-painted ceramics, carved wood and decorative Florentine homeware. It has been run by the same family for three generations. Seen from the street it could be mistaken for a souvenir shop; inside, you’re buying directly from the artisans, alongside pieces brought in from a few other Florentine families that make ceramics.
L’Arte de’ Ciompi Firenze, near the Duomo (church), is a tiny shop packed with handmade stationery, books and leather-bound goods that has been run by the Capigatti family across four generations. Beyond the small storefront is a workshop containing typographic tools and two-century-old presses for leather manufacture. You’ll find hand-crafted leather journals, handmade tarot cards, wooden clocks and desk accessories, and a corner devoted to Pinocchio — the fictional character created by the Florentine-born author Carlo Collodi. The store bills itself as a “typical Florentine craft shop,” but almost everything is designed and made in-house from leather, wood and paper, inspired by medieval and Renaissance Florence. Products are priced well below those in the city’s luxury boutiques, which makes it even more compelling.
Eredi Paperone Bottega d’Arte, also near the Duomo, is a fifth-generation, family-run boutique devoted to traditional Florentine paper craft: hand-marbled paper, block-printed and hand-stamped designs, leather bookbinding and calligraphy. Journals, bookmarks, cards and decorative sheets fill the front of the shop; at the back, a working atelier lets you watch the marbling and printing process in progress. The same family curates handcrafted leather bags, wallets, belts and travel accessories from small Tuscan workshops, alongside pieces under its own label. Both paper ateliers ask that visitors refrain from taking photographs (at least of individual products) which is understandable in an age of instant copying and fast-fashion online replicas. And both shops are (wo)manned by members of the family.
