Florence & Tuscany Guide / Museums / Silver Museum

The Silver Museum is housed in magnificently frescoed rooms formerly the summer apartments of the grand dukes in the Pitti Palace. The first room, on the ground floor, has a frescoed vault by Angelo Michele Colonna depicting Jupiter descending from Olympus to consign the emblems of power to the Medicis. The wall decorations are by Agostino Mitelli. The next room, frescoed with the Stories and Triumphs of Alexander, is also the work of Colonna and Mitelli, as is the adjoining Throne Room with its allegorical figures of Power, Justice and Time.

The largest and most splendidly decorated room, the former Silver Chamber, is decorated with huge frescoes carried out on the occasion of the wedding of Ferdinando II and Vittoria della Rovere in 1635. The room next to it holds the funerary mask of Lorenzo the Magnificent, together with an outstanding collection of antique vases.

Also noteworthy the Amber Room which contains an 18th-century silver relief of the Deposition of Christ in the style of Roman art. A collection of 16th- and 17th-century vases made from pietra dura and rock crystal is housed in the private Council Chamber.