Ponte Vecchio & Jewelry, Florence / Online
Goldsmith-alchemist of Via San Niccolò — sculptural jewel-architecture in a museum-workshop.
Best for Wearable gothic sculpture.
Workshops & Classes — Florence
10 stores · curated ORBIS register
Murano glass micro-beads and Bohemian crystal become necklaces and earrings at Aprosio & Co, Ornella Aprosio's Florence atelier founded in 1993. In the Oltrarno, Officine Nora provides a shared workshop where resident jewellers make and sell their own pieces. Short courses and bench rental accompany that workshop's jewellery production at its Via dei Preti premises. Scuola del Cuoio offers leather goods directly from its Santa Croce monastery workshop, where visitors can watch artisans at work.
Visit official site ↗Ponte Vecchio & Jewelry, Florence / Online
Florence jewelry atelier founded in 1993 by Ornella Aprosio, a former antique-costume restorer, who designs necklaces and earrings from Murano glass micro-beads and Bohemian crystal, made with about thirty artisans at her Via del Moro workshop.
Best for Glass-bead marvels.
Aprosio & Co. was founded in Florence in 1993 by Ornella Aprosio, who was born in Rome and began her career as an assistant editor at Vogue before working as a restorer of antique clothing, including 1920s evening gowns — work that gave her hands-on expertise in fine, complex beadwork. That restoration background shaped the atelier she later opened: jewelry built from Murano glass micro-beads, known in Italian as conteria, sourced from Venice, combined with Bohemian crystal beads from the Czech Republic. Aprosio designs necklaces, bracelets, earrings, brooches and handbags worked into floral and figurative motifs, produced with a workshop of around thirty artisans rather than mass manufacture. The atelier operates from Florence, with new collections previewed each year in Paris alongside the ready-to-wear calendar, positioning the jewelry within a fashion context rather than as purely decorative craft. The beadwork technique — building dimensional, sculptural jewelry entirely from small glass and crystal spheres rather than metal settings — remains the atelier's defining signature and the basis for its inclusion among Florence's recognized artisan workshops.
Visit Instagram ↗Florence / Online
Ferragamo began as Salvatore Ferragamo's Florence footwear company in 1927. Its range expanded into leather goods and ready-to-wear, followed by silk and accessories. Palazzo Spini Feroni houses the company's historic Florence presence, while the museum in its basement is a separate visitor attraction.
Best for Ferragamo footwear and leather goods with Florence design history
Salvatore Ferragamo established his Florence company in 1927, concentrating on women's footwear. The business subsequently expanded into leather goods and ready-to-wear before silk and accessories followed as distinct parts of the range. Shoes remain an entry point into a house whose offer now extends well beyond its original speciality.
Palazzo Spini Feroni connects that history with a specific Florentine building. Ferragamo opened a footwear workshop there in 1938, and the palace became the company's headquarters and the setting of its first Florence store. The museum occupies the medieval basement, providing a separate way to encounter the founder's work and the company's archive.
A shop visit and a museum visit serve different purposes. One is for comparing the current collections; the other depends on the museum's exhibition programme and admission arrangements. The group's timeline dates the museum's inauguration to 1995, long after the workshop arrived in the palace. Planning for both can give more context to a footwear purchase, but a museum ticket should not be confused with access to a working production workshop.
Visit official site ↗Florence / Online
Founded as a Florentine leather house in 1921 — the double-G empire still rooted in Tuscan workshops. Guccio Gucci worked as a porter at London's Savoy hotel (from 1897) before opening the Florence shop in 1921 on Via della Vigna Nuova.
Best for The icons: Horsebit loafers, Jackie bags, and full-look luxury.
Guccio Gucci, who had absorbed luxury's theatre working at the Savoy in London, opened his Florentine leather goods shop in 1921, selling equestrian-inflected luggage and saddlery whose hardware — the horsebit, the green-red-green web stripe — became the house vocabulary. Wartime material shortages produced the bamboo-handled bag of 1947, still in production. The family saga that followed was operatic enough for cinema, but the house's Florentine craft base endured through every act, and its creative directors — Tom Ford's 1990s glamour, Alessandro Michele's maximalist archive-mining — each revived it by returning to the codes. The horsebit loafer, added to MoMA's collection, may be the single most-copied shoe in menswear. Florence is the right city to buy: the house began here, and the loafer, the bamboo bag, and the web stripe all carry the origin visibly.
The Gucci Garden in Piazza della Signoria adds archive rooms and a Bottura restaurant to the Florentine pilgrimage — see it before buying at the flagship.
Visit official site ↗Florence / Online
Florentine leather goods house founded 1970 near Palazzo Corsini by Wanny Di Filippo and his wife Nadia; bags and accessories are still made within about 30km of the Florence workshop. Sold to Japan's Look Holdings in 2019.
Best for Natural vachetta totes that age beautifully.
Il Bisonte was founded in 1970 by Wanny Di Filippo and his wife Nadia, starting as a small artisan leather workshop near Palazzo Corsini in Florence, where the brand's headquarters, showroom, and flagship store remain today. Di Filippo, who had worked as an auto-parts sales rep and taught himself leatherworking, founded the business after a company rejected his designs as too unconventional. He named the brand after the bison, his favorite animal. All Il Bisonte leather goods are still produced in workshops within roughly 30 kilometers of the Florence headquarters. Di Filippo retired in 2019 and sold the brand to Look Holdings, its longtime Japan-based distributor.
Ponte Vecchio & Jewelry, Florence / Online
Officine Nora is a shared jewellery studio and shop on Via dei Preti in Florence, established in 2014. Independent makers use its equipped benches and sell their jewellery, with the shop describing its pieces as handmade in Italy. Workshops and private lessons provide another way to engage with the studio, separate from buying a finished piece.
Best for Independent jewellery makers and goldsmith workshops in Florence
Officine Nora is a jewellery coworking studio and shop in Florence, bringing several independent makers into one working space. Margherita de Martino Norante developed the project after jewellery school and established its shared environment in 2014. The studio occupies a former precision-mechanics workshop, connecting its present work with the building's earlier practical use.
Makers can rent equipped benches, while shoppers can choose jewellery from the independent artists working within the project. The shop describes its pieces as handmade in Italy, rather than presenting a single designer's uniform collection. Different makers bring their own approaches, so the material and construction should be considered for the particular piece being bought.
Workshops and private lessons offer a separate reason to visit from buying a finished object. Identify the kind of experience you want before making an enquiry, since learning at a bench differs from browsing the shop. The published address is Via dei Preti in Florence, not a shopfront on Ponte Vecchio simply because jewellery is the subject.
Visit official site ↗Oltrarno, Florence / Online
Florentine leather workshop founded in 1956 by brothers Piero and Roberto Peroni, known for hand-decorated 'cuoietto artistico fiorentino' leather made without stitching; now run by the third generation.
Best for Hand-finished belts and bags.
Pelletteria Peroni is a Florence leather workshop founded in 1956 by brothers Piero and Roberto Peroni. It is known for a hand technique called 'cuoietto artistico fiorentino,' an approach with roots in Renaissance-era Florence that decorates and assembles leather goods - often with gold-leaf detailing - without stitching. Pieces are cut, decorated and assembled by hand rather than by machine. The business has since passed to a third generation, brothers Maurizio and Marco Peroni, who continue the same hand techniques while adding their own design work. Over more than 65 years of operation it has received craft recognition, including honors from Eurispes in 2007 and from OmA in 2015.
Visit official site ↗Scuola del Cuoio
Worth a DetourFlorence / Santa Croce / Online
Florence leather school and workshop inside the Franciscan monastery of Santa Croce, founded in 1950 by the Gori and Casini families with the friars to teach leatherworking to war orphans; still family-run, with visitors able to watch artisans work and buy directly from the workshop.
Best for Monastery-made leather goods and bespoke pieces.
Scuola del Cuoio was established after the Second World War through a partnership between the Franciscan friars of the Monastery of Santa Croce and the Gori and Casini families, Florentine leather artisans active since the 1930s. Marcello Gori and his brother-in-law Silvano Casini moved their workshop into the monastery's dormitory space, with the explicit mission of teaching leatherworking to war orphans as a practical trade. The school opened its doors to retail customers in May 1950. Following Gori's and Casini's deaths in 2003, the business passed to Gori's daughters - Laura, Francesca, and Barbara - who still run the school and workshop.
Visit official site ↗Florence, Italy
Roberto Ugolini opened his bespoke shoemaking workshop on Via dei Michelozzi in Florence's Oltrarno district, opposite the Basilica di Santo Spirito, in 1995 at age 28, continuing a family shoemaking tradition spanning four generations.
Best for Bespoke patina, Florentine
Roberto Ugolini is a bespoke shoemaker whose ground-level workshop sits on Via dei Michelozzi in Florence's Oltrarno district, directly facing the Basilica di Santo Spirito. He opened the business in 1995 at age 28, but the craft runs deeper in his family: his great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all shoemakers before him, and he learned the trade within that Florentine artisan lineage rather than through a formal design school. Each pair is entirely handmade, with roughly thirty hours of work going into construction once a bespoke last has been developed for a client — a process that, including the customer's first pair, takes around half a year, with a documented discount on subsequent pairs made from the same last. The workshop has built an international clientele over three decades, with press coverage specifically noting a strong following among Japanese customers, alongside general recognition as one of Florence's most established bespoke shoemakers. Ugolini's business is representative of the broader Oltrarno artisan quarter, a concentration of small ateliers south of the Arno historically associated with leatherwork, shoemaking and other hand crafts, distinct from Florence's larger fashion-house retail presence on the north bank.
Visit official site ↗Pitti Mosaici
Hidden GemOltrarno (near Pitti Palace) / Online
Florentine pietre-dure mosaics, decorative panels and custom works made by the family workshop.
Best for Handcrafted mosaics — pietre dure (semi-precious stone) mosaics using traditional Florentine technique; museum
Visit official site ↗Curated ORBIS register · official links shown where recorded