#11 in Top 20 Tuscany for An Anniversary · ★★★★★
The St. Regis Florence
A 15th-century palazzo attributed to Brunelleschi on the Arno, 80 rooms and 19 suites, the Florence riverside flagship.
A 15th-century palazzo attributed to Brunelleschi on the Arno, 80 rooms and 19 suites, the Florence riverside flagship.
"A 15th-century palazzo attributed to Brunelleschi on the Arno, 80 rooms and 19 suites, the Florence riverside flagship."
The St. Regis Florence occupies a 15th-century palazzo on Piazza Ognissanti, directly on the Arno, a building widely attributed to Brunelleschi, the architect of the Duomo, and later home to the noble Giuntini family before it became a grand hotel in 1866. Inside, 80 rooms and 19 suites carry hand-carved gilt detail and one of three design palettes (Medici, Florentine and Renaissance), and the hotel runs the signature St. Regis butler service. For an anniversary, the case is the address and the ceremony: a riverside palace steps from the Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi, dinner under the Murano-glass canopy of the Winter Garden restaurant, and a butler to arrange the small touches. The honest trade-off is that this is a formal city-palace hotel on a busy riverside square, not a quiet Tuscan retreat: the coveted Arno-view rooms carry a steep premium, courtyard- and street-facing rooms can catch traffic and scooter noise, and the whole experience is polished and pricey rather than intimate. Book an Arno-view room or suite, request a high floor, and reserve dinner ahead.
For the occasion, request an Arno-view room or a riverside suite on a high floor, the view of the river and the Oltrarno hills is the reason to stay here. The interior- and piazza-facing rooms are handsome but cost far less precisely because they miss the water; if budget matters, take a deluxe room and spend the difference on dinner.
Reserve a table at the Winter Garden ahead of time and ask for the canopy room for an anniversary dinner. Use the St. Regis butler to line up early Uffizi or Accademia entry, both are an easy walk, and to arrange flowers or champagne in the room before you arrive.
The St. Regis Florence sits within our broader Top 20 Hotels in Tuscany for an Anniversary list. It scored an aggregate 9.6/10 across the three editorial criteria, competitive against the field but, on an anniversary-specific factors, the angle above is what earned its rank. For the alternatives in the same Tuscany neighbourhood, see Florence (Piazza Ognissanti, Arno river) and adjacent. For a different city entirely, see the related lists below.
With dates settled, the booking window that works is about twelve weeks ahead. The view-facing suites disappear earliest, and high-season inventory moves on a timescale of months, not weeks. It is the terrace and plunge-pool suites, the rooms this rank rests on, that book up soonest.
A ranked shortlist, a special offer worth booking, and the overpriced stay to skip. Straight from the editors.