For around ten days in September, jazz and live music move through Florence after sunset. A Renaissance courtyard one evening, a garden in Oltrarno the next, then a terrace above the rooftops of the city.
The Florence Jazz Festival doesn’t revolve around a single venue. Its concerts are spread across different neighbourhoods and locations, offering another way to explore Florence during the final weeks of summer.
More than jazz
Jazz is where the festival began, but its programme has gradually expanded to include reggae, electronic music, singer-songwriters and more experimental sounds.
What has remained unchanged is its connection with the city. Instead of bringing everyone to one large arena, the festival uses squares, villas, gardens, cloisters and local venues as temporary stages.
The result is a programme that feels closely connected to Florence itself, moving from one part of the city to another over several evenings.
How the Florence Jazz Festival works
During the first days, concerts are hosted in different locations around Florence, usually in the evening. Many events are free or have relatively affordable tickets.
This is the most itinerant part of the programme. Depending on the night, you might find yourself listening to music in a historic garden, inside a courtyard or on a terrace overlooking the city.
Towards the end of the festival, the programme usually comes together around a Main Stage. For a few evenings, larger concerts and bigger audiences replace the smaller events scattered around Florence.
Florence jazz festival
Concert venues around Florence
One of the locations often involved is Villa Bardini, on the Oltrarno hillside. Its gardens host outdoor events with Florence stretching out below.
Other stops bring a more informal atmosphere. Rifrullo Firenze, in San Niccolò, and Vip’s Bar at Piazzale Michelangelo are places where music becomes part of an evening already spent around the city.
Further into Oltrarno, Conventino Caffè Letterario offers a smaller and more intimate setting, while Forte Belvedere takes the festival higher above Florence.
The amphitheatre at Villa Strozzi, Santarosa Bistrot near the Arno and Habana 500 have also been part of the festival’s route in different editions.
Locations can change from year to year, with other spaces such as the Anfiteatro delle Cascine occasionally joining the programme. That variety is part of the idea: discovering live music in different corners of Florence rather than returning to the same venue every night.
The final part of the festival usually moves towards Porta Romana, where the Main Stage welcomes some of the busiest evenings of the programme.
Getting to the Florence Jazz Festival from hu Firenze camping in town
Staying at hu Firenze camping in town means you can leave the car behind and head towards Florence by public transport.
The campsite is in via Generale C. A. dalla Chiesa, on the eastern side of the city. From here, bus line 14 connects the area with central Florence, making it easy to continue towards the neighbourhoods and venues involved in the festival.
Once you reach the centre, many of the locations around Oltrarno, San Niccolò and Porta Romana can also be reached on foot.
And because the festival changes venue from one evening to the next, the journey between concerts can become part of the experience too: crossing the Arno, walking through quieter streets and seeing another side of Florence after dark.
Florence after dark, one concert at a time
If your stay at hu Firenze camping in town falls during the Florence Jazz Festival, September evenings offer one more reason to spend time outside.
Gardens stay lively after sunset, historic spaces open up to music and neighbourhoods that might normally be a quick stop become somewhere to spend the whole evening.
There’s no real need to follow the entire programme. Pick a concert, choose an area of Florence you’d like to explore and leave some time in between. With a festival spread across the city, what happens on the way can be just as much a part of the evening.
