Afrom January in Florence the Palatine Chapel and the Museum of Russian Icons in Palazzo Pitti, the most imposing Renaissance palace in the city which is located in the Oltrarno area, within walking distance of the Ponte Vecchio. The original nucleus of the building dates back to 1458, as the urban residence of the banker Luca Pitti: purchased by the Medici family in 1549, it became the main residence of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, first of the Medici and then from 1737 of the Habsburg-Lorraine. In the short five-year period 1865-70 in which Florence was the capital following the unification of Italy it had the honor of serving as a royal palace for the House of Savoy: in 1919 Vittorio Emanuele III donated it to the state, thus becoming one of the main state museums of ‘Italy.

The original core of the building dates back to 1458

The Boboli Gardens are a must

L‘imposing the palace is an incessant destination for tourists from all over the world and houses several specialized museums and is completed by the Boboli Gardens behind it, one of the best and most well-kept examples of an Italian garden: you can visit the Treasury of the Grand Dukes dedicated to applied art; the Museum of fashion and costume, the richest in Italy dedicated to fashion; the Porcelain Museum, the Carriage Museum and the new Museum of Russian Icons located on the ground floor; the royal apartments, the apartment of the Duchess of Aosta and the neighborhood of the Prince of Naples; the Gallery of Modern Art with valuable works by the Macchiaioli.

The extraordinary Palatine Gallery

But the very reason that pushes tourists from all over the world to visit it and that makes it count among the main European museums is the Palatine Gallery housed in the entire noble floor amidst frames, furnishings, stuccos, silks and baroque skies, with a succession of magnificent rooms with walls completely covered with 500 works chosen from among the masterpieces of the main Medici collections. It is an extraordinary collectionia with paintings in sumptuous frames by Titian, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and Rubens and many other great painters; they are further enriched by the presence of sculptures, vases and tables of semi-precious stones according to the model of the eighteenth-century paintings. Also striking is the series of frescoes painted by Pietro da Cortona for Ferdinando II de ‘Medici in the mid-17th century in the so-called “Sale dei Pianeti”. But what really excites and takes the breath away even to those who do not know art history is the entrance into the room that includes the largest concentration of Raphael’s paintings in the world., including the famous and very sweet Madonna della Seggiola.