Museum sights in Tuscany
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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 s…
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Museo del Bargello
Crowds clamour to see David, but few rush to Michelangelo’s early works in the Bargello. The artist was just 22 when a cardinal commissioned him to create the drunken Bacchus displayed in the ground-floor hall. His large roundel of the Madonna and Child with the infant St John, known as Tondo Pitti, portrays the halo-bare pair in a very human light. However, the collection’s most illustrious member is another David. Donatello’s bronze version from the 1440s, the first freestanding nude to be sculpted since classical times, is elegant and slenderly androgynous – a curious contrast from Michelangelo’s he-man version. These are just a few highlights of an extraordinary c…
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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 del Duomo
Light, airy and surprisingly overlooked by the crowds, the Cathedral Museum, behind the cathedral, safeguards works that once adorned the Duomo, Battistero and campanile. The museum begins with a history of the Duomo told in the best English-language signage in Florence. Under the glass-topped courtyard you’ll find the original version of Ghiberti’s awe-inspiring masterpiece – the Porta del Paradiso (Doors of Paradise). Designed for the Battistero, the doors took 27 painstaking years to complete and are considered a seminal work of the early Renaissance for their naturalism and innovative use of perspective. Other masterworks in the museum include Michelangelo’s P…
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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 lookalik…
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Museo Nazionale di San Matteo
From Piazza Garibaldi, veer east along the Lungarno to visit the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, a repository of medieval masterpieces housed in a 13th-century former Benedictine convent. This fine gallery has a notable collection of 14th- and 15th-century Pisan sculptures, including pieces by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Andrea and Nino Pisano, Francesco di Valdambrino, Donatello, Michelozzo and Andrea della Robbia, but its collection of paintings from the Tuscan school (c 12th to 14th centuries) is even better, with works by Berlinghiero, Lippo Memmi, Taddeo Gaddi, Gentile da Fabriano and Ghirlandaio on show. Don’t miss Masaccio’s St Paul, Fra’ Angelico’s Madonna …
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Museo dell'Opera del Duomo
No museum provides a better overview of Piazza dei Miracoli's trio of architectural masterpieces than the Museum of the Cathedral, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. Home to cathedral canons between the 12th and 17th centuries, it has a profusion of works of art once displayed in the tower, cathedral and baptistry. Highlights include Giovanni Pisano's ivory carving of the Madonna and Child (1300) carved for the cathedral's high altar and his Madonna del Colloquio (Madonna of the Colloquium).
Legendary booty includes various pieces of Islamic art including the griffin that once topped the cathedral and a 10th-century Moorish hippogriff.
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Museo Civico
Inside Palazzo Comunale is the Museo Civico, occupying rooms richly decorated by artists of the Sienese school. Of particular note is Simone Martini’s famous Maestà (Virgin Mary in Majesty), on display in the Sala del Mappamondo. Completed in 1315, it features the Madonna beneath a canopy surrounded by saints and angels and is Martini’s first known canvas. In the Sala dei Nove are Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s didactic frescoes depicting Allegories of Good and Bad Government, contrasting the harmony of good government with the – alas, much deteriorated – depiction of the privations and trials of those subject to bad rule.
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Museo Archeologico
The Museo Archeologico is within Santa Maria della Scala. Most of the collection consists of pieces found near Siena, ranging from elaborate Etruscan alabaster funerary urns to gold Roman coins. In between you'll see some statuary, much of it Etruscan, a variety of household items, votive statuettes in bronze and even a pair of playing dice.
The collection is well presented, and the surroundings - twisting, arched tunnels - perfectly complement it and are a cool blessing on stifling-hot summer days.Admission to the museum is included in the price for Santa Maria della Scala.
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Museo di Santa Maria Novella
Hidden off to the left of the Santa Maria Novella’s facade, the Chiostro Verde (Green Cloister) takes its name from the green earthen base used for its frescoes. The best are by Paolo Uccello, including the outstanding Il Diluvio Universale (Great Flood), from the 1420s. Nearby, the Cappellone degli Spagnoli (Spanish Chapel) is crammed with well-preserved frescoes by Andrea di Bonaiuto from the 1360s. They tell a complex and abstract allegory covering everything from civil law and Pythagorean geometry to the triumph of the Catholic Church.
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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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Ecomuseo dell'Alabastro
As befits a town that has hewn the precious rock from nearby quarries since Etruscan times, Volterra has its own alabaster museum, the Ecomuseo dell'Alabastro, which shares the same building as the Pinacoteca. On the ground floor are contemporary creations, including a finely chiselled mandolin and a bizarre fried egg, while on the two upper floors are choice examples from Etruscan times onwards and a re-created artisan's workshop.
From the top-floor windows, there are gorgeous views of the surrounding countryside.
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Galleria del Costume
Few visitors make the effort to visit the Pitti’s Galleria del Costume, thus missing its absolutely fascinating, if somewhat macabre, display of the semi-decomposed burial clothes of Cosimo I, his wife Eleonora di Toledo and their son Don Garzia. Considering their age and the fact that they were buried for centuries, Eleonora’s gown and silk stockings are remarkably preserved, as are Cosimo’s satin doublet and wool breeches and Garzia’s doublet, beret and short cape.
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Museum of Mural Painting
The Museum of Mural Painting, within the Chiesa di San Domenico, houses a collection of largely Tuscan paintings. Artists represented include Filippo Lippi, Paolo Uccello and Bernardo Daddi with his touchingly naive polyptych of the miracle of the Virgin's girdle. Enjoy too the 14th- to 17th-century frescoes and graffiti.
A combined ticket, bought at any of the three sites, gives entry to the Museo di Pittura Murale, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo and Castello dell'Imperatore.
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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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Roman Amphitheatre
Adjoining the Museo Archeologico, this once seated up to 10,000 spectators. Inside, there's a sizable collection of Etruscan and Roman artefacts, including locally produced ceramics and bronzes. Among the highlights is the Cratere di Euphronios, a large 6th-century-BC Etruscan vase, decorated with vivid scenes showing Hercules in battle, and, upstairs, an exquisite tiny portrait of a bearded man executed on glass in the 3rd century AD.
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Museo dell'Opera del Duomo
View the original panels of the pulpit at Duomo, adorned with playful putti (winsome cherubs) designed by Donatello and Michelozzo in the 1430s, in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo where paintings by Filippo Lippi, Caravaggio, Bellini and Santi di Tito hang.
A combined ticket, bought at any of the three sites, gives entry to the Museo di Pittura Murale, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo and Castello dell'Imperatore.
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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
Florence's most bizarre museum, housed in a crumbling 14th-century Victorian-decorated palazzo, contains the legacy of Federico Stibbert (1838-1906), fan of military paraphernalia and hoarder extraordinaire. Expect everything from a Botticelli painting and magnificent 16th- to 19th-century armour to quaint, curious and useless junk. There's a nice shady garden to rest and regain your composure.
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Museo Civico
The Gothic Palazzo Comunale on the eastern flank of the Piazza del Duomo is home to the Museo Civico, with works by Tuscan artists from the 13th to 20th centuries. Don’t miss Bernardino di Antonio Detti’s Madonna della Pergola (1498), with its extraordinarily modern treatment of St James, the Madonna and Baby Jesus; look for the mosquito on Jesus’ arm.
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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 Rospigliosi e Museo Diocesano
Guardian of a wealth of artefacts that were discovered during restoration work of this former bishop’s palace. Many treasures from the Cattedrale di San Zeno’s collection are also on show here, including a 15th-century reliquary by Lorenzo Ghiberti supposedly housing a bone of St James and parts of his mother’s and the Virgin’s pelvic bones. Visits are strictly by guided tour (1¼ hours).
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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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