Tour n° 7: The Palazzo Vecchio Museum

The Palazzo Vecchio Museum

In Florence, power has always been unquestionably identified with the Palazzo della Signoria, the building that more than any other tells us the city’s political history.

Begun in the late 13th century, it was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio on the site where a beautiful theatre stood in Roman times, the remains of which can still be seen in the building’s underground rooms, and where the Ghibellines’ houses were later built. It was with the defeat of the latter at the hands of the Guelphs that it was decided to build a grandiose building for the government of the Priors. There are not many traces visible inside the building of this first plan, while the subsequent interventions are much more visible, starting with those carried out during the 15th century at the behest of the Republic up to those made in the late 16th century when the palazzo became the residence of the Medici, first Dukes and then Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

The tour begins in the grand Salone dei Cinquecento, built by Girolamo Savonarola when, after raising the city against the Medici, he succeeded in becoming chancellor of the Republic, and then transformed into the public audience hall of Cosimo I. The latter, on the day after his marriage to Eleonora da Toledo, elected this building as his new residence, so he not only enlarged and transformed it to adapt it to the new needs of the family, but sought to obscure the memory of the republican glories and rather exalt the past and present glories of the Medici family.

Thus he had Giorgio Vasari and a large group of artists working with him create an extremely rich decorative apparatus celebrating the most important members of the Medici family, from Cosimo the Elder to Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leo X, and Clement VII, and finally his wife Eleanor of Toledo and, of course, himself.

Marvellous decorations and frescoes unfold in every single room, from the state rooms to the private ones, from the chapels to the studioli, through which one can truly ‘converse’ with the family, get to know their stories, their innermost secrets, and their greatest aspirations.

Completing all the decorations are extraordinary works such as Michelangelo’s marble group known as ‘The Genius of Victory’, Donatello’s splendid ‘Judith’ and many others.