Pitti Palace

The Palazzo Pitti is Florence's largest palace, a massive rusticated stone building constructed from 1458 for banker Luca Pitti and subsequently purchased by the Medici in 1549, who expanded it into the principal residence of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany for the next two centuries. The palace now houses seven separate museum collections accessible on different ticket combinations. The Palatine Gallery on the piano nobile contains the Medici family's hanging collection of over 500 paintings, with works by Raphael (the Madonna della Seggiola and La Velata), Titian (the Portrait of a Gentleman), Rubens, Caravaggio, and Andrea del Sarto displayed as they were in the 17th century — walls densely hung floor to ceiling rather than in the didactic manner of a modern museum. The Royal Apartments above the Palatine Gallery preserve the 19th-century interior decoration of the Savoy royal family with original furnishings, textiles, and state rooms. The Boboli Gardens — one of Italy's earliest and most influential formal gardens, begun in 1549 by Niccolò Tribolo — occupy the hillside behind the palace in an extensive Italian Renaissance garden design featuring fountains, grottoes, an amphitheater, and a long cypress avenue leading to the Kaffeehaus belvedere with views over Florence. The Porcelain Museum and Silver Museum occupy subsidiary wings. The Costume Gallery in the Meridiana wing houses the most important fashion archive in Italy. The palace complex is far less crowded than the Uffizi and represents one of the best-value extended cultural visits in Florence.