Palazzo Pitti

Florence's rulers lived on the south bank of the Arno, and their palace is the largest museum complex in the city. The core of Palazzo Pitti was begun in 1458 for the banker Luca Pitti, a rival of the Medici; Vasari credited the design to Brunelleschi, but it is now usually attributed to Luca Fancelli. The severe rusticated front, with its rows of arched windows repeated like a Roman aqueduct, was left unfinished when Pitti's fortunes collapsed. In 1549 the palace was bought by Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de' Medici, and it grew into the main residence of the grand dukes of Tuscany, then of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, and briefly of the kings of united Italy, until Victor Emmanuel III gave it to the nation in 1919.

The first stop is the Palatine Gallery on the piano nobile, where more than 500 paintings still hang frame to frame as in a princely picture gallery rather than in chronological order. Raphael is the headline: the Madonna della Seggiola, La Velata and the portraits of Agnolo Doni and Tommaso Inghirami, alongside Titian's Penitent Magdalene and The Concert, Andrea del Sarto, Rubens and Artemisia Gentileschi. The ceilings of the planetary rooms, frescoed by Pietro da Cortona in the 1640s, later inspired the state rooms of Versailles. Beyond them lie the royal apartments, redecorated for the House of Savoy.

The upper floor holds the Gallery of Modern Art, strongest in the Tuscan Macchiaioli painters of the 19th century; the Treasury of the Grand Dukes shows Medici cameos, gems, ivories and Lorenzo the Magnificent's ancient vases; and the Museum of Fashion and Costume, Italy's leading fashion museum, keeps the 16th-century burial clothes of Cosimo I and Eleonora. Behind the palace climb the Boboli Gardens, a textbook Italian garden laid out by Tribolo and Ammannati, with Buontalenti's dripping grotto, the Kaffeehaus terrace and views over the city. Palace and gardens are managed with the Uffizi as the Uffizi Galleries, and Vasari's elevated corridor still links the two buildings over the Ponte Vecchio.

Getting there

The palace stands in the Oltrarno district of Florence, about 1.6 km from the centre of Florence and a short walk south across the Ponte Vecchio. Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR), is about 6 km away.