Fiorentina

Fiorentina are the club of Florence, and the first thing that marks them out is the colour. Almost nobody else in the game wears it: a deep viola, purple, that the club has carried since the 1920s and that gives the fans their name, i Viola. On their chest is the giglio, the red lily that is the symbol of Florence itself, so when you watch Fiorentina you are watching a city wear its own crest. This is a proud, art-drunk, self-regarding place that has never quite had the football to match its sense of itself, and that gap, between what Florence feels it deserves and what the team usually delivers, is the emotional weather of a matchday here.

The modern story has two threads worth carrying in. The first is heartbreak in Europe. Under a settled, likeable side, Fiorentina reached the final of the UEFA Conference League two seasons running and lost both: to West Ham in 2023, and to Olympiacos in 2024, beaten by a goal in extra time in Athens. Two finals, two defeats, and a fanbase that has learned to brace. The second thread is the club's American owner, Rocco Commisso, who bought Fiorentina in 2019 and has poured money into a new training centre and, more contentiously, into the ground. Both threads meet at the stadium, which is the single most important thing to understand before you book.

The Stadio Artemio Franchi is a genuine architectural landmark, a 1931 design by Pier Luigi Nervi, one of the great engineers of reinforced concrete, with a slender spiral staircase and the tall Torre di Maratona clock tower that make it a protected building. That protection is exactly why the rebuild is so fraught: the club cannot simply knock it down, so instead the Franchi is being renovated in stages with the team playing on through the works. Capacity has been cut and shuffled season to season, whole stands close and reopen, and the completion date has slipped repeatedly, well past its original target. Go in expecting a building site with a match breaking out inside it, and check which sections are actually open when you book, because for the next few seasons it genuinely changes.

Getting there

The Franchi sits in the Campo di Marte district, east of the historic centre, and it is one of the easier grounds in Italy to reach. The simplest way is the train: Firenze Campo di Marte station is a couple of minutes' walk from the stadium, and trains run out to it from Santa Maria Novella, the main station, in well under ten minutes. On foot it is a flat thirty-five to forty-minute walk from the Duomo, straight out east, which plenty of people do on a nice evening. City buses also serve the ground from the centre. There is no metro in Florence, so it is train, bus or your feet; skip the car, because the streets around the ground are tight and residential and parking is a nightmare on a matchday.

Making a day of it

Set your expectations right: this is not a pub crawl, it is a Florentine evening, and that is a good thing. The rhythm is the aperitivo, an unhurried drink with something to eat before kickoff, and the food is worth planning your day around because Florence has the best street food in Italy. The one to seek out is lampredotto, the slow-cooked fourth stomach of the cow, chopped and piled into a crusty roll dipped in its own broth and hit with salsa verde, sold from carts and hole-in-the-wall stands, the trippai, all over the city. It is the true Florentine matchday feed, a couple of euros, eaten standing up, and it is delicious once you get over what it is. If you want the sit-down version of Florentine cooking, the bistecca alla fiorentina, the vast rare T-bone, is the local monument on a plate, though it is a long dinner rather than a quick pre-match bite.

The area right around the Franchi in Campo di Marte is residential, so it is not a bar quarter, and the smart move is to make your afternoon in the centre and travel out. The neighbourhoods to aim for are around Sant'Ambrogio and its market, and the streets near Santa Croce, where the aperitivo scene is real and the walk or short train to the ground is easy. A glass of Chianti or a Negroni, the cocktail Florence invented, is the drink to have.

Right by the ground, the one spot that is pure Fiorentina is Bar Marisa, a tiny, memorabilia-crammed viola shrine that has served fans for decades and is worth a stop for the atmosphere alone. Otherwise, take the classic route: eat a lampredotto, have your aperitivo in the centre, and drift out to Campo di Marte with the purple shirts as kickoff nears.

Inside, and where the noise is

The heart of the noise is the Curva Fiesole, the north end, named for the hill town of Fiesole that sits behind it in the distance. This is the home of the organised support, the ultras, the flags and the singing, and it is where the atmosphere is made; the opposite end is the Curva Ferrovia, the "railway" curve to the south. The long side with the Nervi clock tower is the Maratona, and the main stand opposite is the Tribuna. The honest caveat here is the renovation: with stands opening and closing through the rebuild, the singing sections and the away allocation have been moved around, so the Fiesole is the traditional engine but where the noise actually gathers can shift from season to season while the work goes on.

Calibrate your expectations the way you would at any Italian ground. A midweek fixture against a mid-table side, in a half-built stadium at reduced capacity, can be muted. But a big game, a European night or the visit of Juventus lights the Fiesole up, and on those nights the purple and the flags and the din are the real thing. If you want to be in it, aim at the Fiesole; for a calmer seat with the best view of the Nervi architecture, the Tribuna side opposite looks across at the tower.

The songs

The anthem is the Canzone Viola, the "purple song," an old, swelling tune the ground sings that is unusually tender for a football anthem, more civic hymn than war chant, and hearing it roll around the Franchi before kickoff tells you how much this club is bound up with the city. Around it come the ultra chants from the Fiesole, and the constant invocation of the giglio and the viola, the lily and the purple, the two things that make Fiorentina Fiorentina. You will not need the words; the colour does the talking.

Merch

The official Fiorentina store operates at the ground and in the city centre, so a viola shirt with the giglio on it is easy to pick up. The purple is the souvenir here; nobody else wears it, and it reads as Florence as much as football.

Getting a ticket

For a normal Serie A game this is manageable, with the usual Italian paperwork. Fiorentina sell single-match tickets online through the official club channel, and an ordinary fixture is usually available to a visitor planning a week or two ahead. Keep the Italian rules in mind: every ticket is personal and named to the holder, and your ID can be checked against it at the gate, so buy in your own name. The reduced capacity during the rebuild tightens supply, so the popular sections and the bigger games go faster than they once did.

The games to plan well ahead for are the visit of Juventus, the fiercest rivalry Fiorentina have, along with the other big sides and any European night, which sell out quicker and cost more. Reselling above face value is illegal in Italy and a resold ticket can fail the name check at the turnstile, so skip the third-party resale sites and buy through the club or an authorised tourist-package agent for a sold-out game.

A word on that Juventus rivalry, since it colours the day if the fixture lands during your trip: the enmity runs deep, rooted in decades of grievance that hardened when Fiorentina sold their idol Roberto Baggio to Juventus in 1990 and the city erupted in fury at losing him to the club it hated most. It is the one game where the Franchi's temperature goes all the way up. Enjoy the intensity, keep your colours sensible, and understand you have walked into the middle of an old grudge.

One last thing

Come to Fiorentina for the things that make it singular: a major club that plays, almost alone in the game, in purple, wearing its city's own lily, inside a listed Nervi masterpiece that is being painstakingly rebuilt around it. Eat a lampredotto, have your aperitivo in the centre and take the short train out to Campo di Marte, get in for the Canzone Viola, and take the football on its honest terms, a club that has broken its own heart in two European finals and keeps turning up in numbers anyway. That devotion, in that colour, in that city, is the reason to go.

The Franchi is mid-rebuild and the open sections, capacity and ticketing all shift season to season; confirm what is actually open and check anything time-sensitive the week you travel, and buy every ticket through the club or an official seller.