Florence & Tuscany Guide / Museums / Palazzo Pitti

A Treasure Chest of Riches

Passionate and precious, the Palazzo Pitti is everything you have ever dreamed about. Walk into a fantastic palace filled with the aura of intrigue, rivalry, ostentatious tastes and absorb all that your heart desires. Walk through the rooms where royal families lived, ate, breathed, danced, held royal banquets and lived lives that were filled with the essence of royalty. Find a fabulous treasure house that suddenly comes into view and visualize the exotic collection of a fabled family.

Come and have the time of your life in a place that holds a spectrum of rich collections, antiques, sculptures and paintings that take your breath away. So get ready for an awesome performance, take a deep breath and take a slow walk from the Santa Trinita. Stroll over the Ponte Santa Trinita and look over its sides at the picturesque Arno. Take in the quaint scenario and continue south down the Via Maggio. As you reach the cross-roads, you will find Sdrucciolo dei Pitti. The Palazzo Pitti can be accessed from the south side of the Arno which is just a five minute walk from Ponte Vecchio. Feel the excitement well up as you turn left and find Florence’s most magnificent palace, the Palazzo Pitti which lies serene and majestic on the Piazza Pitti 1, 50125 Firenze.

Come and admire the lovely museums in the Palazzo Pitti, with a staggering number of one hundred and forty rich apartments. Each of the rooms are frescoed with delightful and intricate work by talented artists and sculptors, such as, Alessandro Allori, Pietro da Cortona, Ciro Ferri, Volterrano, Bernardo Poccetti, Giovanni da San Giovanni, Salvatore Rosa, Sebastino Ricci and Anton Domenico Gabbiani. Surrounded with myths and the lore of ancient times the Palazzo Pitti stands today as a proud monument to the royal and noble families of yore. So come and open a treasure chest filled to the brim with a dazzling display of fantastic art, architecture and the secrets of time shrouded with mystery and history. Discover a marvelous lunette which depicts the Palazzo before it was extended with a background of the Boboli Gardens which shows the amphitheatre with the famous red stone which was used in the extensions later. View the lovely painting of ‘Martrydom of St. Agatha’, by Sebastino del Piombo which the Medici family bought for their collection.

A Royal Dream

Get introduced to Luca Pitti’s dream palace built in 1448. Hear his story as his palace underwent a series of changes though it was first designed by the famous architect, Filippo Brunelleschi. Luca Pitti was a very rich merchant and a rival of the Medici family. In the meantime, Cosimo ‘the Elder’ had employed Michelozzo to build his Medici palazzo in Via Largo but on a more sober scale. This did not deter the flamboyant Luca Pitti who wanted a huge palazzo to be built which was better than the Medici palace. So he told Brunelleschi to build a palazzo with windows that should be as big as the Medici doors with a courtyard that was bigger than the Medici Palazzo itself! Only the façade was built by Brunelleschi and was continued only ten years after his death by Ammannati. Changed a number of times till the year 1783, the Palazzo Pitti emerged as a huge structure with seven bays that was incorporated on either side of the palace. Later renovated to twenty three bays long on the piano nobile with thirteen bays on the top floor, the palazzo was extended by Ammannati’s assistant, Alfonso Parigi between 1620-30. Walk through the Square and enter the royal domain past the three stone paved driveways right up to the main door which opens out onto the Square. You will find that the driveways are interspersed with a chipped stone and cement fabrication, the color of gravel. Let its appealing color wash over your mind as you stare with a sense of wonder at the imposing palace. Elegantly structured, the palace had been the model of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, built by Maria de Medici, Queen of France.
Come and listen to the story of the wheels of fate when Eleonora di Toledo, the rich and elegant Spanish wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici bought the Pitti estate in the year 1550. She set the cogs of construction spinning with fabulous ideas to renovate, beautify and extend the Palazzo Pitti. The beautiful Spanish wife of Cosimo I was inspired by the beauty of the Palazzo Pitti and its surrounding garden. So she employed the talented landscape artists, sculptors and architects to landscape the lovely Bobili Gardens with fabulous statues from the 15th and 17th century marble sculptors, with a magical grotto, an outdoor amphitheatre and beautiful fountains interspersed with herbs, rare plants and trees in a lush and verdant ambience. Spread out in a spectacular and grand version of a ‘backyard’ the Boboli Gardens is the house of ‘Morgante’ the dwarf with a rounded belly on his tortoise sculpted by Valerio Cioli, which was a favorite of Cosimo I which lies near the exit. The work on the palazzo was set in motion in the two tremendous stages of the Palazzo Pitti and the Medici family and the Palazzo Pitti after the Medici family. The Medici dynasty controlled the entire estate till they fell from power. Let your eye skim over the Palazzo and settle on the beautiful and small palace of Fort Belvedere whose ramparts were built by Michaelangelo during the ‘Seige of Florence’ in 1529. Come and find a veritable treasure house of the Medici tribe built by Bernardo Buontalenti between the years 1590 and 1600 which was often mistaken for an artillery or a defense storage place.

Experience a sense of awe as you discover that in the years between 1865 and 1871, the Palazzo Pitti was known as ‘La Residenza Reale’. This lovely Palazzo had hosted many noble families of Tuscany including the royal King Emmanuel II between the years 1865 to 1871, who stayed at the Pitti Palace at the time when Florence was the capital of Italy. Come and take a walk through the architecture of the Renaissance and find Brunelleschi’s brilliant design of a typical Renaissance palace. The Palazzo Pitti is the perfect example of this creative structure in the shape of a cube in height and width with the Florentine faceted stone work taken from the famous Boboli Hill. Extended over a massive space, the palace has three floors with three entrance doors on the ground floor and seven windows fashioned on each side of the first and second floors. A lovely balcony surrounds the entire building which connects all the windows with a loggia built just under the roof.

A Rare Sojourn

The famous map, ‘The Catena’ reflects the Palazzo in its initial stages of construction in 1470. Bartolomeo Ammannati’s fantastic courtyard shows the depth of creativity and the façade was extended byGuilio and Alfonso Parigi in the 16th century which is still seen today. The famous and noble family of the Lorraines who stayed there had employed skilled architects like, Guiseppe Ruggeri, Gaspare Maria Paoletti and Pasquale Poccianti who created the Rondos or the lateral wings around the square along with the Palazzina of the Meridiana. As a great adventure discovery, the Pitti Palazzo sprawls into the Bolboli Gardens which happens to be one of the first gardens in Italy with fantastic museums and galleries with rare collections of the Medici and the Lorraine families, such as, The Palatine Gallery with 25 rooms which displays a range of private portraits of the noble families.

The other lovely and fabulous collections are stored in the Argenti Museum, The Costume Gallery, The Coach Museum and The Ceramics Musuem. The Porcelain Museum houses the rare and delicate tableware of Meissen, Doccia, Vincennes and Sevres which you will find in the precious little Casino del Cavaliere located in the Boboli Gardens. The Royal Apartments and the Apartments of the Duchess pf Aosta showcase the gorgeous living spaces of the royalty. The Gallery of Modern Art, with 30 rooms comprises of a collection of 2000 works of art from the 18th to the 19th centuries which revolves around the Macchioli School of Italian Impressionists. The Silver Museum exhibits its intricately carved vases which belonged to Lorenzo the Magnificent with a fabulous spectrum of objets d’art by German and Florentine gold and silver smiths. This wondrous array of museums and galleries include the splendid Galleria degli Argenti which was the summer home of the noble dukes of the Medici clan. Come and look at a one-of-its-kind collection of silverware, intricately carved vases, antique furniture, precious stones, Chinese and Japanese artefacts, cameos, works of art, sculptures, porcelain, a costume gallery and a historical décor extending into the lovely setting of the Boboli Gardens. As the biggest museum complex in the city, the Palazzo Pitti has been evolved over 32.000 square meters with a fascinating and interesting array of historical, naturalistic and artistic subjects and artifacts over a period of five centuries. Now walk into the Monumental Apartments located in the right wing of the piano nobile with original 17th century furnishing. Invite the mind to view a splendid and grand display of royalty and imagine the King of Savoy’s short visit to the fabulous Palazzo Pitti.

Spend a whole day filling your mind with an amazing wealth of art and architecture. Come to the fabulous creation of Palazzo Pitti and give yourself an incomparable journey through the canvas of time. The Palazzo Pitti is open during April, May and June through August, every day from 8.15 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. During the months of March to October, the Museum is open from 8.15 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. The Palazzo Pitti is closed to the public only on the first and last Mondays of every month and costs just Euro 4, so come and indulge yourself.

The adventure goes on

Museo degli Argenti (COST: EUR4, combined ticket with Giardino di Boboli; OPEN: Daily 8:15-1:50)

The Galleria del Costume (COST: EUR5, combined ticket with Galleria d'Arte Moderna; OPEN: Daily 8:15-1:50)

The Galleria d'Arte Moderna (COST: EUR4; EUR2.60 combination ticket from visitor-information center includes Pinacoteca Comunale and Casa Romana; OPEN: Oct. 16-Mar. 15 daily 10:30-1 and 3:30-5:30; Mar. 16-Oct. 15, daily 10:30-1 and 3:30-7)

The Galleria Palatina (COST: EUR6.50; OPEN: Tues.-Sun. 8:15-6:50) COST: Galleria Palatina EUR6.50

Museo degli Argenti EUR4 combined with Giardino di Boboli, Galleria del Costume and Galleria d'Arte Moderna EUR5 combined. OPEN: Tues.-Sun. 8:15-6:50.

Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy. PHONE: 055/294883. COST: EUR4 combined ticket with Museo delle Porcellane and Museo degli Argenti. OPEN: Apr.-May and Sept., daily 8:15-6:30; June-Aug., daily 8:15-7:30; Mar. and Oct., daily 8:15-5:30. Closed 1st and last Mon. of month

All but Galleria Palatina closed 2nd and 4th Sun. and 1st, 3rd, and 5th Mon. of month

Enrich the soul with the pomp and splendor of days long past…