Cutting in line

Sometimes it seems like everything in Florence is part of a scam, or gives rise to one . . .

The lines at some of the major museums throughout Italy have grown so long that there's an entire industry devoted to getting you around them. They take advantage of the fact that most museums offer special deals and times for group tours - the notorious prepackaged bus tours. Individual travelers can sign up to go with a group tour guide or even, in some cases, simply pretend to be part of a group and then split as soon as they're past the door.

The Vatican Museum in Rome is probably the most notorious for this, but the lines at the Uffizi and the Academia in Florence are just as bad if not worse. You can buy your "group" tickets ahead of time on-line, a painless though expensive process. But in some cases you can find tickets just down the street, like at this tobacco place around the corner from the Academia.

It's cheaper there than on-line, of course. And not to worry - though the process has this vaguely illicit feel, it's commonplace.

If you don't go in high season, or if you time your visit right, none of this is necessary - but you have to know the ebb and flow of the tour groups, which differ from place to place. The Academia is relatively small, so a couple of busloads of Japanese tourists fill the place up. If you can time your visit to late afternoon - when most have headed back to their hotels to get ready for an early (for Europe) dinner - you tend to find shorter lines.

Usually. I'm a jump-the-queue guy myself.

Some of the real treasures don't have any lines at all. I saw this incredible "collection" of Fra Angelica's art at San Marco, a former convent (we'd be more likely to call it a monastery, since the men who lived there were monks) only a few blocks from the Academia; no line at all.