 |
|
||||||
 |
 |
||||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
Great Discoveries "Personal Audio Guides" will provide you with the most enjoyable and informative way to visit the Piazza della Signoria. Our carefully researched tour identifies and locates the most relevant treasures to ensure that you do not miss important works and that you clearly understand each items artistic and historic significance. As you view these carefully selected treasures, our professional narrators, accompanied by historically appropriate background music, will delight, amuse and inform you, making your visit a most memorable experience. Learn about Italy's most magnificent Renaissance palace, now one of the world's great museums, with informative descriptions, photo's, building diagram, sample audio tracks and more.
The palace remained the seat of the Medici court and the family’s successors, the Lorraine dynasty, for some three centuries until 1859 when the Grand Duchy of Florence was annexed to the unified Kingdom of Italy. The palace and its courtyard were the focus for dazzling public and royal events and celebrations, including the weddings, baptisms and funerals of the Medici and Hapsburg-Lorraine’s who succeeded the Medici’s as rulers of Tuscany in 1736. Despite the fact that the Pitti Palace has hosted all of the ruling families of Florence, Tuscany and Italy from the 16th century on; the Medici’s, the Lorraine’s, the Bourbon's, the Bonaparte’s and the Savoy’s, Florentines, conservative by nature, have always refused to call it a royal palace.
Its countless rambling rooms house several museums, the most important of which is the Palatine Gallery, whose beautiful salons are filled from floor to ceiling with paintings from the Medici private collection. It was in these rooms that the Medici accumulated the collections of great and not so great works of art that create the unique character of the Palatine Galleries. It is one of the largest and most important museums in the world containing works of Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Lippi, Tintoretto, Peter Paul Rubins, and others. Cardinal Leopoldo de Medici provided mostly Venetian paintings while the Grand Prince Ferdinand de Medici contributed his exceptional Renaissance and Baroque Collection.
The Lorraine’s were primarily responsible for providing the rooms with the furniture and other precious objects that help create the unique neo-classic and Baroque opulence you see today. The Lorraine’s opened the Palatine Galleries to the public in 1828. In 1871 the palace became the private residence of the Royal Family and remained so until 1946 when Italy became a Republic; at which time the palace and all its art treasures became the property of the State.
The Pitti Palace and the attached Boboli Gardens are home to a collection of museums that at first blush seems to present an intimidating sightseeing prospect. In fact, only two of the galleries are essential viewing, the Palatine Galleries and Royal Apartments, which hold much of the Medici private art collection of over 500 works. Whether or not you visit the other galleries will depend on the time you have available and your particular tastes.
The Museum degli Argenti houses a collection of the family’s silver, antiques, and other precious objects of art. The Gallery of Porcelain is a collection of Medici and Loraine dishes and table settings, which are housed in the Casino del Cavaliere in the Boboli Gardens. The Museo delle Carrozze is a collection of Medici and Loraine State carriages. The Galleria delle Costume features an array of 18th and 19th century clothing, housed in the Palazzina della Meridiana, which you enter from the Boboli Gardens. And the Galleria d’Arte Moderna or Modern Art Gallery is a 30-room collection of mostly uninspiring paintings from the 18th century onward.
|
|||||||||||||||
The Pitti Palace is undoubtedly the grandest of all Renaissance palaces. It may not bear the Medici name, but members of Florence’s
first family were owners of this monolithic palace for many centuries.
Brunelleschi designed and built the original
palace in 1458 for the rich and powerful Luca Pitti, a business
rival to Cosimo (the Elder) di Medici. Luca Pitti never completed
the palace because in later years his own banking speculations and
the cost of such a grandiose building financially ruined him. In
1549 Luca’s grandson Bonaccorso was ironically forced to sell
Luca’s glorious palace to Eleanora, the Duchess of Toledo and the rich and beautiful wife of Cosimo I di Medici.
The
Hapsburg-Lorraine’s arranged the collections to create a pleasing
display of size and color that harmonizes with the furniture, sculpture,
and ceiling decorations of each room. Unlike most of the world’s
great museums, the Palatine Gallery's layout follows neither chronological
order nor schools of painting; instead its hanging reflects the
personal taste of the great collectors who lived in the palace.
Each unique room takes its name from the scenes frescoed on its
ceiling, a practice that was begun by the Medici and continued by
the Lorraine’s throughout the late 19th century.
for your first sample before playing the second sample, or you
will not hear it.
