Florence has always been a city of creativity!
The city, theatre of activity of Giotto, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo and Artemisia Gentileschi, keeps attracting artists and creators.
Florence is a city of your artisans, designers, fashion lovers and artists. What makes the city so special is the fact that many of the artists chose the urban space for their big open-space workshop.
In Florence, you will find art literally at every corner. Street signs, walls, and roundabouts: art will be all around you. The locals love street art, and we are always thrilled to find a new work decorating another corner of town.
Who are the main creators of street art in Florence? Where can you find street art in the city? Let me take you on a walk through the Florentine street art!
Street Art in Florence: an introduction to the city’s urban creativity
It’s difficult to say when it all started. Definitely the activity of the French-born artist Clet Abraham, who moved to Florence from Rome and started his funny game with the Florentine street signs fourteen years ago, allowed the city to discover its new vocation.
Today Florence is one of the centres of street art in Italy, together with Rome, Padua and Milan. Florentine street artists know one another. They often work together developing projects in common, or simply going out together to stick their artworks to the walls.
Besides Clet, other young artists made their names known through their art. Many of them remain anonymous, as Lediesis, Blub, or Exit Enter. Others run their workshops where you can meet them, have a chat with them and discuss their artistic philosophy. One thing is certain: Florence is their inspiration and their battlefield!
Where do I find street art in Florence?
Street art in Florence can be found everywhere. The artworks displayed in the historical centre constantly change their locations, as the authorities tend to remove them. The artists constantly add new works in the urban space of Florence.
Clet sticks his drawings on the street signs, Blub and Kraita317 cover the gas openings with their posters. Exit Enter draws the stories of his little men around the town.
Outside of the historical centre, you can find instead the big murals painted mainly on the facades of residential buildings and schools. Scandicci, a town in the southwest of Florence, is where many of the murals were created over time.
Street Art in Florence: best neighbourhoods to explore
Oltrarno
Oltrarno is the most authentic, Florentine and creative neighbourhood where many artists work, and many street artists leave their works. Try to get lost between the narrow streets and look carefully at the walls. You’ll spot many stencils, posters and weird street signs around you.
San Niccolò
In recent years, San Niccolò became a true centre of Florentine street art. Here, Clet opened his studio. More recently, Maxy Gallery, which represents some of the Florentine street artists, opened next door. San Niccolò became a compulsory stop for anyone interested in the Florentine street art.
Via Palazzuolo
Since 2023, once a year, the Street Levels Gallery, together with the city of Florence, has promoted an urban art festival in via Palazzuolo. Besides the collective exhibition, street artists decorate the rolling shutters of the commercial activities along the street. Visible after the closure of the commercial activities, the artworks transform this rather problematic corner of Florence into an art gallery.
Street art in Florence: the most important artists you can’t miss
Clet Abraham
Clet Abraham concluded his artistic studies at the Fine Arts Academy in France. His Italian adventure started in Rome, where he worked for many years as a furniture restorer.
When he moved to Florence, he was negatively impressed by the quantity of confusing street signs placed all over the city.
Trained as a drawer and interested in art as communication, he followed his intuition and started putting stickers on the signs, sending powerful messages about the contemporary world.
Clet works in different media. He is the author of numerous art interventions, such as putting the big nose on San Niccolò’s tower. His sculpture Common Man decorates the Florentine Ponte alle Grazie.
You will find his street signs all over the city, and you can also visit his studio in via dell’Olmo 8 RED, in San Niccolò neighbourhood. If you’re lucky, you’ll find Clet there, at work on his new projects.
Lediesis
Lediesis are true Superwomen.
The two creative women became known and recognisable thanks to the cycle of images that transform famous women into superwomen.
Proudly showing Superman’s costume, Virgin Mary, Frida Kahlo and Mother Theresa blink on the viewer, establishing an immediate connection.
Lediesis want to empower women, create the models of bravery, originality, care, and humanity, through the examples of real women that live around us. Lediesis displayed their art on many shows, including an exhibition at the Archaeological Museum in Naples.
Exit Enter
If you carefully observe the walls of the Florentine buildings, you will soon notice little figures animating the most hidden corners of the palaces. They play, they climb, they fight, and they kiss. Their father is Exit Enter, who also signs his work with a .k.
Born in 1990, Exit Enter graduated from the Florentine Academy of the Fine Arts. He started experimenting with the urban space of Florence in 2013. Art is for him a communication mean and through the figure of his little men, he tells stories, comments on the contemporary world, and dialogues with the public.
He currently lives in Tuscany and participates in many artistic projects, including mural interventions and exhibitions.
Blub
Anyone who visits Florence after a bit becomes a fan of strange posters representing famous men wearing masks and swimming underwater.
Giuseppe Verdi, Mona Lisa, Galileo, Leonardo are all skilful scuba divers navigating through blue waters.
Blub’s cycle “Art can swim” is born as the artist’s comment on the global climate crisis and the risk of us all ending up underwater.
His posters brought him recognition. Today Blub exhibits in Italy and abroad.
Kraita317
Kraita317 is a graphic designer.
He moved to Florence in 2018, and the contact with the city invited him to a dialogue with forms, shapes and colours.
In his compositions, Kraita explores abstract balances, colour compositions and gives life to strange creatures. He often works with reused materials and explores the stratification of images, patterns and textures.
He displays his works in the centre of Florence, but he also works in his studio, developing diverse artistic projects and street art interventions.
Ache77
Ache’s masks watch you. It’s impossible to walk by the fixed, immobile female face without feeling observed.
Arche77’s art carries a mystery and becomes a mantra. The artist investigates human relationships. Invites us to interact with his protagonists with the intensity of our gaze. It’s like a moment of prayer happening in the urban space of the city.
Il Sedicente Moradi
Michelangelo used to say that every block of marble already has a sculpture hidden inside. Sedicente Moradi says that every piece of wood already has a shape, already is a sculpture. The artist does not sculpt but composes, intertwines, collects and puts together.
He gives life to fantastic animals that populate the centre of Florence. A deer in a roundabout, a bird in a square, a crocodile on the bank of the Arno River. His art comes from nature, speaks silently with the language of Mother Earth and reconnects us with our environment.
Notable murals and street art in Florence
Florentine street art is known for small works, stencils, and posters. However, you can also find important murals painted by some famous Italian street artists. These are located outside of the historical centre. Here are some of them.
Jorit, Nelson Mandela, Piazza Leopoldo
A big portrait of Nelson Mandela decorates a residential building in Piazza Leopoldo. Painted by Jorit it became one of the most iconic murals of Florence.
Jorit Antonio Gramsci in via Canova
In 2020, Jorit also depicted the portrait of Antonio Gramsci, a Sardinian intellectual, long incarcerated by the Fascist government. The mural is located in the Isolotto neighbourhood, on the wall of the residential building in via Canova 215.
Francisco Bosoletti , The Last Judgement in via Corbinelli, Galluzzo
In 2021, in Galluzzo, the Argentinian street artist Francisco Bosoletti, painted his vision of Dante’s “Last Judgement” on the walls of residential buildings in the neighbourhood. This oneiric vision of human bodies in movement became an homage to Dante and part of the celebrations for 700 years from the poet’s death in 1321.
Street art in Florence: book your tour with us!
Want to experience Florence beyond the surface and discover the hidden world of its street art and urban creativity?
Book a custom tour of Florence with us and explore the city like a local, uncovering murals, stencils, secret corners, and stories you won’t find in any guidebook!
