8 Best Dark Side of Florence Tours (2026): Mysteries, Legends & Real Crime

A dark side of Florence tour is an evening walk through the historic centre built around the city's crimes, executions, conspiracies and superstitions rather than its art. The best-known of them, The Dark Side of Florence: Mysteries and Legends, carries 3,510 reviews at 4.9, which makes it one of the most reviewed walking tours in the city in any category.

If you arrived here searching for a Florence ghost tour, one thing is worth saying plainly: the city does not really run them. We searched the full catalogue four different ways, and exactly one listing has the word ghost in its title, with four reviews behind it. There is no established ghost-walk scene of the kind Edinburgh, York or New Orleans have built. The good news is that the thing people usually want from one, a dark walk through old streets with unsettling stories attached, is exactly what the mysteries and legends tours deliver, and Florence has unusually strong material for it.

What a dark Florence tour actually covers

• The Monster of Florence. The city's genuine true-crime story: at least sixteen people, mostly couples parked in the surrounding hills, killed between 1968 and 1985. Two men were eventually convicted, but an earlier conviction was overturned and many consider the case unresolved. Our top pick leads with it.
• Savonarola. The Dominican friar who ran Florence as a puritan theocracy and was hanged and burned in Piazza della Signoria on 23 May 1498, where a marker still sits in the pavement.
• Medici intrigue. Poisonings, rivalries and the conspiracy that put a murder inside the cathedral during Mass.
• Dante's Inferno. Written by a Florentine in exile, and the basis for one of the self-guided games here.
• The 1993 Via dei Georgofili bombing. A Mafia car bomb in the street behind the Uffizi, just after 1am on 27 May 1993, which killed five people and damaged 173 paintings. Guests report it featuring on both the top pick and the evening walk, where the olive tree planted afterwards is a stopping point.
• Superstitions, torture and executions. The listings cover the everyday brutality of a Renaissance city rather than its art.

The short answer

One note on how we have ranked these, because "best" is doing unusual work on this page. We are not sorting by review score: every guided tour here rates between 4.0 and 4.9, and the top two are separated by a hundredth of a point. We rank on the evening a dark-history searcher actually wants, which means the subject matter, whether a real guide tells it, whether the departure is after dark, and how much evidence sits behind the rating. Price is the tiebreaker.

• Best overall: The Dark Side of Florence, €3 plus a tip, 4.9 from 3,510 reviews.
• Best if you want a drink in hand: the Tipsy Tour bar crawl, €65, 4.9 from 363.
• Cheapest guided: the Dark Side tour, even once you tip properly.
• Best fixed price: the City Wonders evening walk, €18, with headsets.
• Best for families: the Medici treasure hunt app, €17.50, children from 5.
• The only one called a ghost tour: Hili Travel's Ghost & Crime Tour, €39, but on four reviews.

For daylight Florence, our Florence walking tour comparison covers the standard routes and our Duomo tour guide the cathedral where the Pazzi conspiracy ended in blood. If an evening out matters more than the history, the Florence food tour guide compares the eating alternatives. On timing, our Florence in November guide covers the month this walk runs in full dark from five in the afternoon.

Ranked on the criteria set out above: real stories, told after dark, by someone who can tell them, with enough reviews behind the rating to mean something. Price matters less here than in almost any category we cover, because the best option is also nearly the cheapest.

Between €3 and €65, though the €3 needs explaining. The spread here is wider than most categories because it covers three different products: a tip-based walk, fixed-price guided tours and self-guided phone games.

• Carry cash for the tip-based tour. The €3 you pay online is a booking fee. The guide is paid at the end, the listing suggests €10 to €50 is normal, and you do not want to be the person patting their pockets.
• Bring cash, and more than the €3 suggests. The top pick is tip-based and the guide is paid at the end. Guests consistently advise arriving with notes, and one points out the operator runs the same walk free to join when booked directly, so the €3 is a platform fee rather than the price of the tour.
• Expect talking, not sightseeing. These are standing-and-listening evenings. The low ratings across several tours come from guests who wanted landmarks and photographs and got two hours of storytelling instead, including one who covered four miles without going inside anything.
• Book an after-dark departure. Guided slots run from 18:00 to 21:00 and the material lands better once the light has gone. The 21:00 City Wonders departure and the 19:15 and 20:00 starts are the ones to aim for.
• Do not assume the night walk is at night. The tour sold as Florence Highlights By Night departs at 15:30 and 17:00, so in June you will spend most of it in full sun.
• Check the language before you book the top pick. It runs in English or Spanish only, and the listing states that Italian is not available on this tour.
• Headsets matter more than they sound. Florence's centre is noisy in the evening and only one tour here includes audio headsets. On a walk built entirely on listening, that is worth €18 on its own.
• The two bar crawls are near-identical on paper. Same meeting point, same 20:00 start, same cap of 15, €5 apart. The difference is the review base: 363 against 18.
• Decide whether you want a guide or a game. Two of these eight are phone apps with no guide at all, and one lists the absence of a guide under its exclusions. They are good value and flexible, but nobody tells you the story.
• Treat small review counts as unknowns, not as ratings. The only tour actually called a ghost tour has four reviews, and the cheapest game has only two in the past year. Neither number tells you much either way.
• Bring shoes for cobbles and a layer. These are ninety-minute standing-and-walking tours on uneven medieval paving, and Florence evenings are cool from October through April even when the days are warm.
• Eat afterwards, not before. Walks finish in the historic centre around 21:00, which is exactly when Florentines sit down to dinner, so you will not struggle for a table.
• Visiting in December? Our Florence in December guide is worth checking before you book a time slot: December is the one month this walk runs in genuine darkness throughout, with sunset at 4:38pm rather than the 9pm of midsummer.
• Visiting in January? Our Florence in January guide covers a month when dark arrives by late afternoon, which makes an early evening walk a genuine night one.