Palazzo Pitti was an unexpected highlight of my Florentine holiday - not only were fine paintings by Canaletto, Raphael, Botticelli and Veronese on display, but the ornately-furnished rooms highlighted the sumptous lifestyle enjoyed by the royal houses of Medici, Hapsburg and Savoy over the centuries. Afterwards, a walk in Boboli Gardens proved a relaxing antidote to the cultural overdose, a... More

Both the Pitti palace and the gallery have a strange story. The Medici rivals, the Pitti family wanted to built palace so austere and grandiose in the highest part of the town in order to impress the town people and provoke the jealousy of them rivals. However the cost became so high that the Pittis came in front of the... More

If you cross the river Arno on Ponte Vecchio, you reach the Palazzo Pitti, the Renaissance palace of the Pittis, the rivals of the Medici family. Galleria Palatina, one of eight museums of the Palazzo Pitti, locates in the right corner of the inner yard, in the left wing of the first floor of the building. For the lovers of... More

This was for me the best gallery I visited in Florence, and something of an undiscovered delight. While the tourist hordes are queuing for hours to get into the Uffizi or Accademia, I was able to arrive and go straight in. The building was once the royal palace so half is the rooms preserved as they were when in use,... More