The Gallery occupies the entire first and second floor of the large building built between 1560 and 1580 based on a design by Giorgio Vasari: it is one of the most famous museums in the world for its extraordinary collections of ancient sculptures and paintings (from the Middle Ages to the modern). The collections of paintings from the fourteenth century and the Renaissance contain some absolute masterpieces of art of all time: it is enough to remember the names of Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo, Raphael , Michelangelo, Caravaggio, as well as masterpieces of European painting, especially German, Dutch and Flemish. No less important in the panorama of Italian art is the collection of ancient statuary and busts of the Medici family. The collection adorns the corridors of the Gallery and includes ancient Roman sculptures, copies of lost Greek originals.

Website

Purchased in 1550 by Cosimo I de'Medici and his wife Eleonora di Toledo to transform it into the new grand ducal residence, Palazzo Pitti soon became the symbol of the consolidated power of the Medici over Tuscany. Palace of two other dynasties, that of the Habsburg-Lorraine (successors of the Medici from 1737) and the Savoy, who inhabited it as Italian royals from 1865, Palazzo Pitti still bears the name of its first owner, the Florentine banker Luca Pitti, who in the mid-fifteenth century wanted to build it - perhaps based on a design by Brunelleschi - beyond the Arno, at the foot of the Boboli hill. It is currently home to five different museums: the Treasury of the Grand Dukes and the Museum of Russian Icons, with the Palatine Chapel on the ground floor, the Palatine Gallery and the Imperial and Royal Apartments on the main floor of the Palace, the Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of Fashion and Costume on the second floor.

Acquista Biglietti

Behind Palazzo Pitti lies the marvelous Boboli Gardens. The Medici were the first to take care of its arrangement, creating the model of Italian garden which became exemplary for many European courts. The vast green surface divided in a regular way constitutes a true open-air museum, populated with ancient and Renaissance statues, adorned with caves, first of all the famous one created by Bernardo Buontalenti, and large fountains, such as that of Neptune and of the Ocean. The subsequent Lorraine and Savoy dynasties further enriched its structure, expanding the borders that run along the ancient city walls up to Porta Romana. Of notable visual appeal is the terraced area where the eighteenth-century Kaffeehaus pavilion is located, a rare example of Rococo architecture in Tuscany, or the Limonaia, built by Zanobi del Rosso between 1777 and 1778. The visit to Boboli completes that of the Royal Palace of Pitti, of which it is an integral part, and allows for fully grasp the spirit of court life and at the same time enjoy the experience of a garden that is always renewed while respecting its tradition.