Museum sights in Florence
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Galleria dell'Accademia
A lengthy queue marks the door to this gallery, built especially to house one of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, Michelangelo's original David.
Fortunately, the most famous statue in the world is worth the long wait. The subtle detail (not quite as illuminated on copies) of the real thing - the veins in his sinewy arms, the muscles in his legs, the change in expression as you move around the statue - is impressive. Carved from a single block of marble already worked on by two sculptors before him (both of who gave up), Michelangelo's most famous work was also his most challenging - he didn't choose the marble himself, it was veined and its larger-than-life…
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Giardino di Boboli
Despite the volumes of visitors and a slightly shop-worn mien, the Boboli gardens remain both a marvel of Tuscan Renaissance landscape architecture and, in its further reaches, a fine escape from the tourist hordes. Perhaps its most impressive feature is the stately VialedeiCipressi, a grand, cypress-lined avenue that leads down to Isolotto, a marvellous ornamental pond adorned with a marble Neptune and nymphs and, in warmer weather, fragrant citrus trees. Nearer the Palazzo Pitti, a fleshy Venus by Giambologna rises from the waves in the Grotta del Buontalenti, a fanciful grotto designed by the eponymous artist. Don’t miss the haunting ‘face’ sculpture (1998) by Polish…
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Museo del Bargello
It was behind the stark exterior of Palazzo del Bargello, Florence's earliest public building, that the podestà meted out justice from the late 13th century until 1502. Today the building safeguards Italy's most comprehensive collection of Tuscan Renaissance pieces and some of Michelangelo's best early works.
Michelangelo was just 21 when a cardinal commissioned him to create the drunken grape-adorned Bacchus (1496-97) displayed in Bargello's downstairs Sala di Michelangelo. Unfortunately the cardinal didn't like the result and sold it to a banker. Other Michelangelo works to look out for here include the marble bust of Brutus (c 1539-40), the David/Apollo from 1530-32…
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Museo/Chiesa di San Marco
Endowed generously by Cosimo il Vecchio, this former Dominican monastery was an important font of early Renaissance art thanks mostly to its most famous resident, Fra Angelico. The attention to perspective and realistic portrayal of nature have lead critics to call Fra Angelico’s Deposizione di Cristo (Deposition of Christ; 1432) one of the first true paintings of the Renaissance. Fra Angelico was commissioned to produce this painting only because the original painter died. The early-Renaissance architecture of Michelozzo, especially his Chiostro di Sant’Antonio (1440), is also impressive. However, it is the monks’ cells that are most haunting. At the top of the stairs…
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Museo dell'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore
Surprisingly overlooked by the crowds, this museum on the northern (street) side of the cathedral safeguards treasures that once adorned the duomo, Baptistry and campanile. It is one of the city's most impressive museums.
Make a beeline for the glass-topped courtyard with its awe-inspiring display of seven of the original 10 panels from Ghiberti's glorious masterpiece the Porta del Paradiso (Door of Paradise), designed for the Baptistry.
The nearby large room is devoted to statuary from Arnolfo di Cambio's original never-to-be-completed Gothic facade. Pieces include several by Arnolfo - Pope Boniface VIII, The Virgin and Child (with its somewhat strange glass eyes) and …
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Museo dei Ragazzi
Based in Palazzo Vecchio, this museum organises activities and educational workshops for kids here and in the Museo di Storia della Scienza and Museo Stibbert. Budding historians and their parents can hang out with actors dressed up as Cosimo I and Eleonora de Toledo - kids are invited to dress up as their kids (Bia and Garcia) and play with the kinds of toys the two grand-ducal imps used to enjoy.
Other activities include building and taking apart models of the Palazzo Vecchio and of bridges (for those children with an engineering bent), and peering through a remake of Michelangelo's binoculars. Another possibility is to follow around Giorgio Vasari (or rather a…
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Museo di Santa Maria Novella
The indisputable highlight of this museum - arranged around the monastery's tranquil Chiostro Verde (Green Cloister; 1332-62), which takes its name from the green earth base used for the frescoes on three of the cloister's four walls - is the spectacular Cappellone degli Spagnoli (Spanish Chapel). On the north side of the cloister, the chapel is covered in extraordinary frescoes (c 1365-67) by Andrea di Bonaiuto. The vault features depictions of the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost, and on the altar wall are scenes of the Via Dolorosa, Crucifixion and Descent into Limbo. On the right wall is a huge fresco of The Militant and Triumphant Church - look in the foreground…
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Museo dell’Opera di Santa Croce
The Museo dell’Opera di Santa Croce features a Crucifixion by Cimabue, restored to the best degree possible after flood damage in 1966 when more than 4m of water inundated the Santa Croce area. Other highlights include Donatello’s gilded bronze statue St Louis of Toulouse (1424), originally placed in a tabernacle on the Orsanmichele facade; a wonderful terracotta bust of St Francis receiving the stigmata by the della Robbia workshop; and frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi, including The Last Supper (1333).
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Museo Archeologico
Skip the middling collection of artefacts from around the ancient world and head straight to the museum’s Etruscan collection, gathered largely from the region around Florence. Poor labelling and clinical glass-front cabinets feel dustily Victorian, but the collection of statuary, ceramics and jewellery is excellent. Look out for the monstrous bronze Chimera – a part lion, part goat and part snake cast in bronze and considered one of the masterpieces of Etruscan art.
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Museo di Storia Naturale
Four sections of the Natural History Museum are scattered across one of the central university campuses. The ticket office is in the paleontology and geology section, a musty old museum replete with skeletons of ancient beasts, models of same, prehistoric tusks and glass cases laden with fossils. The equally ancient botany (visits by appointment only) and mineralogy sections are in separate buildings a short way down the same drive from the faculty street entrance.
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Museo di Storia della Scienza
Perfect tonic for the art-jaded tourist, this museum is dedicated to Tuscany's men of science, particularly Galileo Galilei, whose telescope, lens and finger are on display. In his memory, Florence founded an Academy of Experimentation and you can see early thermometers and barometers invented by the group, as well as gadgets and innovations, including a mechanical calculator, from around Europe.
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Museo Stibbert
Anglo-Italian, Florence-born Frederick Stibbert (1838-1906) was one of the grand 19th-century wheeler-dealers on the European antiquities market and amassed an intriguing personal collection, showcased in Villa di Montughi aka the Stibbert Museum. The Sala della Cavalcata (Parade Room), where life-sized figures of horses and their riders in all manner of suits of armour from Europe and the Middle East rub shoulders, is particularly great for kids. Other varied exhibits include clothes, furnishings, tapestries and 16th- to 19th-century paintings.
Take bus 4 from Stazione di Santa Maria Novella to the 'Gioia' stop on Via Fabroni, from where it is a short walk.
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Museo Horne
One of the many eccentric Brits who made Florence home in the early 20th century, Herbert Percy Horne bought and renovated this Renaissance palazzo, then installed his eclectic collection of 14th- and 15th-century Italian art, ceramics, furniture and other oddments. There are a few works by masters such as Giotto and Filippo Lippi. More interesting is the furniture, some of it exquisite.
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Museo Casa Buonarroti
Though Michelangelo never lived in Casa Buonarotti, his heirs devoted some of the artist’s hard-earned wealth to the construction of this 17th-century palazzo to honour his memory. The little museum contains frescoes of the artist’s life and two of his most important early works – the serene, bas-relief Madonna of the Stairs and the unfinished Battle of the Centaurs.
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Museo Zoologico La Specola
This charmingly fusty zoological museum is a taxidermist’s dream, with room after room of stuffed animals of every shape, size and origin. The strong of stomach should not miss its macabre collection of wax sculptures of human bodies dissected and in various states of disease. The hall of horrors was created to train 19th-century medical students.
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Casa Guidi
It was here, on the ground floor of 15th-century Palazzo Guidi, across from the south wing of Palazzo Pitti, that Robert and Elizabeth Browning rented an apartment in 1847, a year after their marriage. Robert wrote Men and Women in the apartment they called home for 14 years and poetess Elizabeth both gave birth to their only child here and died here. Britain's Eton College owns the literary-rich apartment today, which can be rented for short stays.
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Museo dell'Antropologia e Etnologia
Italy's first anthropology and ethnology museum is housed in the Palazzo Nonfinito (Unfinished Palace), which was started by Buontalenti in 1593 in the Mannerist style. It was established in 1869 and exhibits unusual goodies such as Ecuadorian shrunken heads and obscure musical instruments collected by roaming Italians.
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Il Genio di Leonardo
Odd how two such museums have landed in Florence. This one is very similar to Le Macchine di Leonardo though slightly less complete and a trifle more expensive. As in the other, you can see life-size models of Leonardo da Vinci's big ideas, from a glider to a tank. Whatever you do, do not visit both museums!
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Museo di Firenze com’Era
Tucked behind Brunelleschi’s dome, this melancholic little museum tells the story of Florence through a series of paintings from the Renaissance through to the 19th century. A newer annexe also displays prehistoric, Etruscan and Roman artefacts, including a diorama of the city as it looked in Roman times.
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Opificio delle Pietre Dure
Founded in 1588 to support the Florentine art of pietre dure (mosaic-like inlays of marble and semi-precious stones), this charming little museum explains how the works are created and includes remarkable examples of the craft, from portraits and trompe l’oeil tabletops to panoramic landscapes.
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Museo delle Porcellane
Housed in the airy casino at the top of the Giardino di Boboli, this museum contains a varied collection of fine porcelain, including fine pieces from Sèvres, Meissen and Vincennes, collected down the ages by illustrious tenants of Palazzo Pitti.
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Macchine di Leonardo
Pop by here for a squiz at some grand-scale models of some of Leonardo da Vinci's more far-fetched ideas, silly things like flying machines, a bicycle, a glider, a tank and other objects that were, actually, centuries ahead of their time.
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Museo Marino Marini
Influenced by ancient Etruscans as well as modernist peers, the bronzes of Marini fill the bright nave of a former church, into which architects have smuggled a mini–brutalist museum. Exhibitions of contemporary art are first-rate.
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Palazzo Vecchio
The traditional seat of government, Florence's imposing fortress palace with its striking crenellations and 94m-high tower Torre d'Arnolfo was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio between 1298 and 1314 for the sig-noria (city government) that ruled med-ieval and Renaissance Florence, hence its original name, Palazzo della Signoria. During their short time in office the nine priori (consuls) - guild members picked at random - of the signoria lived in the palace. Every two months nine new names were pulled out of the hat, ensuring ample comings and goings.
In 1540 Cosimo I made the palace his ducal residence and centre of government, commissioning Vasari to renovate and decorate…
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Palazzo Pitti
Wealthy banker Luca Pitti commissioned Brunelleschi to design this forbidding-looking palace in 1457, but by the time it was completed the family fortunes were on the wane, forcing them to sell it to arch-rivals, the Medici, in 1549. Following the demise of the Medici dynasty, the palazzo remained the residence of the city's rulers, the Habsburg-Lorraine grand dukes of Tuscany. When Florence was made capital of the nascent Kingdom of Italy in 1865, it became a residence of the Savoy royal family, who presented it to the state in 1919.
Our recent stroll around the ground-floor Museo degli Argenti was notable for the fact that no silver was on display. Go figure. Come…
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