The Florence Insider

A licensed Florence guide who runs her own private tours

The Florence Insider is the site of Claudia Vannucci, who describes herself as "a native Tuscan and a licensed Florence tour guide with more than 10 years of experience." She runs private guided tours in Florence herself: museum visits, walking tours and tours of the city's historic cemeteries. The site is also a travel blog about Florence and Tuscany, and on the blog she recommends bike and Vespa tours run by other companies, which she says plainly she does not lead. Anyone looking for a guide inside Florence is in the right place; for the Tuscan countryside, the site points readers to third-party tours instead.

Her background is set out on the About page. She writes that "Tour guide is my full time job since 2013," and that to get her license she "attended a special school and gave a final exam about the art and history of Florence." She holds a master's degree in architecture, with studies "focused on history of architecture and history of gardens." The page says she has been mentioned in Lonely Planet Florence & Tuscany (2023) and in a Fodor's Travel article about the Pazzi Conspiracy. Her sidebar sums up her interests as "a foodie, a museum nerd and a cemetery lover."

The tours she guides

The homepage says she gives "private tours of the most popular museums of Florence," along with walking tours and some less obvious routes, and among "some of my favorite tours" it names the Medici Chapels and San Lorenzo private tour, the Palazzo Vecchio private tour, Florence Cemeteries Guided Tours, and Dark Florence, a historical true crime night tour. On the About page she lists what she can do: guided tours of "the museums of the city, as well as walking tours (and cemeteries of course)," plus help with "the reservations of museums, transportation, accommodation, restaurants, etc."

Dark Florence is the tour described in the most detail. Its page opens by noting that Florence was founded by the Romans in 59 BC and has "more than 2000 years of history," and then insists "This is not a ghost tour!" The walk covers true crime from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: plague and disease, family rivalries, brutal punishments, "the most bloody plot in the history of Florence, the Pazzi Conspiracy," and the deaths of Francesco de' Medici and Bianca Cappello, a case the page says "was only solved 400 years after their death." The page says the stories include buried-alive girls and hangmen lynched by crowds, and that "All the tales that you'll hear are totally true."

The walk "lasts 2 hours and it's approximately 2 km long," which the page calls "a very easy walk in the historical centre." It passes monuments such as Ponte Vecchio and Palazzo Strozzi as well as "unmapped alleys and tiny, unknown piazzas." The meeting point is Palazzo Strozzi. Claudia writes that she usually gives it "at late evening or night, the perfect moment for telling mystery tales," though a daytime version is possible on request.

Bike and Vespa tours she recommends, not runs

The blog has long guides to bike and Vespa tours in and around Florence. Both are recommendations, not her own products. The Vespa guide says "those tours are not given by me personally, but the local companies that I selected are reliable and experienced," and that they can be booked on Viator "taking advantage of their free-cancelation policy." The bike guide says the tours she picked "are given by reliable companies that I know and trust and are led by licensed, professional, local tour guides," and that "most tours have a free cancellation policy" when booked on Viator.

The Vespa picks include a Vespa tour with lunch on vintage Vespas around the hills above Florence, a full-day Vespa tour of Chianti, a Vespa wine tour from Florence to San Gimignano with a meal paired with 9 local wines, and a self-guided electric Vespa tour to Fiesole. She notes that driving a Vespa in Italy requires a valid driving license, an international driving permit for licenses from outside the EU, and a helmet. The bike guide covers an evening e-bike tour that starts at 6.00 pm and lasts two hours, gelato tours of 2.5 hours by regular bike or 2 hours by e-bike, a full-day Tuscany e-bike tour with lunch and wine tasting that she says she has done herself, and a 2-day Chianti e-bike trip. She adds her own advice: take a bike tour "only if you are at least an occasional biker," and the tours she lists provide free helmets.

These guides are useful reading, but a booking made through them is with the third-party company, not with The Florence Insider.

Booking her private tours

Booking is by contact form. The Dark Florence page says "At the moment I am only giving this tour as a private one," and ends with a form: "If you want more information about this walking tour or you want to book the Dark Florence Tour, fill the form below and I will be happy to help you." The page lists "your local tour guide" as what is included and transportation as not included. There is no online checkout, and the site does not publish a price for any of her tours, a deposit, payment methods, or a cancellation and refund policy for the tours she guides herself.

What the site leaves open, and who it suits

The site does not say which languages she guides in, beyond the fact that the whole site is in English. It gives no group-size limit, no age guidance and no accessibility information for her tours, apart from calling Dark Florence "a very easy walk." The Dark Florence page does not give a start time, and it does not say whether the 2-hour walk is priced per person or per group. Anyone booking will get those answers only by writing to her.

The strengths are real. This is a named, licensed guide with a clear specialty in Florentine history, architecture and the darker corners of the city, and a blog that shows the depth of her local knowledge. The site is also honest about which tours she runs and which she only recommends. It suits travelers who want a private guide for the museums or a night walk through Florence's true-crime history, and who are happy to arrange details by message. It is less suited to anyone who wants to see a price and book instantly, or who needs a guide outside the city.