Some 2026 changes important to tourists visiting Florence

Here, very briefly, are some 2026 changes in various rules which are important to tourists (and inhabitants) in Florence.

Personalised museum tickets in Florence

Tickets for the Uffizi galleries now have your name on them. In other words, they are personalised and cannot be used by anyone else. Since October 13, 2025, every Uffizi ticket is personalised. The name on the ticket has to match the photo ID you use as you enter the museum. If they do not match, you do not get in, and the ticket is not refunded.

The same rule applies to the Accademia, the Bargello, and most other Florence state museums. Name on the ticket equals name on the ID, or no entry.

It's also important to note that at the Uffizi and the Accademia, the time on your ticket is when you must be inside, not when you arrive at the door. If you're ten minutes late your slot can be and usually is gone. The best thing to do is to arrive 30 minutes before your time slot.

Each online account can buy a maximum of 10 Uffizi tickets per day, with a separate cap of 5 for the Vasari Corridor.

There is also a new afternoon discount. Since 1 January, 2026, tickets for entry into the Uffizi after 4 pm cost €20 online or €16 at the door, instead of the standard €25. You get the same access to all collections, just a shorter window before the 6:30 closing.

Big reduction in outdoor restaurant seating in the historical centre of Florence 

Florence has banned outdoor dining on 50 streets and banned e-scooter rentals across the historical centre of Florence. The areas around the Ponte Vecchio, the Piazzale degli Uffizi, Via Roma, Via Maggio, Via Romana, Borgo Santa Croce and the Piazza di Santa Maria Nuova are all on the list of locations where outdoor restaurant seating is prohibited. On another 73 streets, outdoor seating is allowed only under tighter rules, with no plastic sheeting, no canvas awnings, no semi-permanent structures, no bright signs.

From April 2026, Florence has banned e-scooter rentals across the city centre. The orange and yellow scooters that lined the Arno last summer are gone. Few can genuinely regret this.

The Baptistry mosaics are not visible until further notice.

One of the most spectacular art treasures of Florence are the ceiling mosaics of the Baptistry.  However, currently although the Baptistery of San Giovanni is open, the famous mosaics of the vault are not visible because of major restoration work. The official notice says the restoration and internal work will continue for the next few years. 

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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Restoration of San Miniato al Monte completed

One of the most beautiful churches in Florence (Michelangelo's favorite) has been under restoration during the past eighteen months. The repairs made to the facade, campanile and roof of the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte, which were covered in scaffolding and transparent plastic for most of that time, are now complete (May 2026). My faithful, intelligent and aestheticly sensitive readers can now once more have an unobstructed view of the facade of this wonderful church next time they are in Florence.

Basilica of San Miniato al Monte

The restoration was financed by Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan and cost 3.6 million euros - money well spent! The whole structure has been reinforced and sensors have been put in place to monitor any changes in the north side of the church where gradual structural movement has been detected in the past.

The Basilica of San Miniato al Monte should not be missed during your visit to Florence. The Basilica is one of the most beautiful Romanesque churches anywhere and its interior is even more spectacular than the facade, richly decorated with marble columns and, especially, mosaics. The mosaic in the bowl-shaped vault of the apse (ca.1260) portrays Christ the Pantocrator between Mary, St. Minias and the symbols of the four Evangelists. The figures stand out Byzantine-style against a gold background in a field populated with oriental birds (symbolizing souls).

The interior of the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte

The Basilica is situated on one of the highest locations in Florence, directly above Piazza Michelangelo. Although it can be reached on foot from central Florence in a reasonable time, it's better to take a bus (line 12 is usually the fastest).

More about the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte. 

More about the churches, abbeys, monasteries and basilicas of Tuscany.

 

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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The iris garden in Florence is open from April 25 to May 20, 2026.

One of the most pleasing sights in Florence at this time of year is the Iris Garden, located just below Piazza Michelangelo and the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte on the southern heights overlooking Florence. The Iris garden will be open to the public from 25 April 2026 until 20 May 2026.

The Iris Garden of Florence is the only one in Europe dedicated to the iris and it houses over 1500 varieties of the iris, which is, of course, the symbol of Florence.

The garden is managed by the Italian Iris Society and is open to the public for one month a year between April and May, the period of the spring flowering. This year, 2026, the opportunity to stroll through the avenues and hills covered with irises and olive trees will be from 25 April 2026 until 20 May 2026, from 10:00 am to 6:00 PM (with last entry at 5.30 pm).

As always, admission is free, but for those who want it, scheduled guided tours are held every Sunday and on public holidays at 11 am and 4 pm, with a contribution of 5 euros per person.

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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Stay in Fiesole when you visit Florence

The most popular months to visit Florence are also tend to be hot and unfortunately visitors experience that heat not just while staggering around the sights of Florence, but also when they're trying to sleep. There is a solution. Find your vacation accommodations in Fiesole!

View of Fiesole above Florence

A bit of history. The Etruscans lived where Fiesole is now - they called it Vipsul - in large part because they were hedonists who enjoyed the good life, especially cool breezes during mid-summer. The Romans were made of sterner stuff. They built their colony down below in the stifling Arno valley where they could tax north-south traffic that crossed the river over the bridge they built there. This was Florentia, founded around 59 BC, most likely under Julius Caesar, to settle veterans in the Arno valley. Needless to say, the better classes of Roman society migrated to their country houses up in Fiesole during summer. They even built themselves a nice theatre up there.

Roman theatre in Fiesole.

You should consider a stay in Fiesole when you visit Florence. Forget the humid heat at midnight, forget the tour group on the doorstep at 7am, forget the queue at your favorite restaurant, forget a street full of drunk twenty-year-olds below the window until 2am. Instead, after a cool, quiet night of sleep, you walk out of your hotel or B&B and onto a quiet piazza where old men are playing cards outside the bar.  A three-star hotel in Fiesole with a view over Florence costs what a two-star in the centro storico of Florence costs without the view. An agriturismo on the slopes between Fiesole and the city often costs less than a standard hotel room in the historic centre of Florence. From the terrace behind the Fiesole cathedral, Florence unfolds below - the Duomo, the Campanile, the Arno, the hills on the far side.

 View of Florence from Fiesole

What about getting from Fiesole to Florence and back? 

Don't take your car, if you have one. You don't need to grapple with traffic, one way streets and ZTLs. Take the line 7 bus from Piazza Mino in Fiesole to Ponte Rosso and then take the T2 tram to Piazza San Marco in central Florence. Buy a single ATAF ticket from the ticket-dispensing machine (cash or touch your credit card to the machine) or from any tabaccheria before you board, or a day pass if you plan to come and go twice. Don't forget to validate your ticket as you enter the bus. Sit on the left side going down for the view. You can even walk down, starting on Via Vecchia Fiesolana, all the way to Florence in about 90 minutes. The fastest way to get from Fiesole to Florence is to taxi which takes 13 min and costs €12 - €15.

Note that I don't recommend that you try to return to Fiesole on foot! The line 7 bus from Ponte Rosso to Fiesole Piazza Mino takes 18 min and departs every 20 minutes.

 Tuscany Quintessence eBike tour of Fiesole from Florence

HOWEVER I can and do highly recommend the Tuscany Quintessence eBike guided tour from Florence to Fiesole and back.

More about the Tuscany Quintessence eBike tour of Fiesole from Florence.

What to see and do in Fiesole.

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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A preliminary drawing and a final painting by Filippo Lippi in Florence

I want to present here an example of how a bit of enjoyable homework can help art-lovers gain some extra insight into how a masterpieces were created by Renaissance artists. Before a recent visit to the Palatine Gallery at Palazzo Pitti in Florence, I was idly looking through a book of Renaissance drawings held in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe at the Uffizi Gallery. Among them was a very delicate, three quarters sketch of a female head, surely intended to be a Madonna, depicting an absorbed and very sweet expression, and, among other features, a refined hairstyle embellished with veils. At the same time, I had a look at a catalogue of the holdings at the Palatine Gallery, and - lo and behold! - the Madonna in the wonderful Tondo Bartolini turned out to be the final version of the Uffizi sketch.

Both the preliminary drawing and the final painting are by Filippo Lippi. The Tondo has long been thought to have been commissioned from Filippo, who was Carmelite friar, by the ambitious and wealthy Florentine merchant, Leonardo di Bartolomeo Bartolini. More recent investigation by Jeffrey Ruda interprets the coat of arms on the reverse of the Tondo as that of a member of the Martelli family and re-dates the painting to between 1465 and 1470 based on similarities to Filippo's final frescoes in the Capella Maggiore at Prato Cathedral.

By looking at a good reproduction of the drawing, one can see that Filippo used first a silver point on paper prepared with a warm, yellow ochre ground, and then refined the silver point outline with thin and light lines of white lead applied with a brush, giving the physiognomy and hairstyle a lovely softness.

The preliminary sketch matches the painted figure down to the most minute folds of the cap and in the ribbon that holds and twists the hair at the top under the veil. One can also see that Filippo was experimenting on the ochre paper with the effects of the light coming from the left, by applying a white wash. 

However, my aim here is not to argue the fine details of art history and connoisseurship, but rather to encourage visitors to Florence who plan to tour the galleries, to spend some time with some art books as a preparation to seeing the works themselves. You never can tell what serendipitous insights will strike you!

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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The newly renovated Vasari Corridor is opened to all

The newly renovated Vasari Corridor opened to all in May 2024. As my always intelligent and attentive readers will know, access to the Vasari Corridor, which runs from the Palazzo Vecchio, via the Uffici Galleries and over the Ponte Vecchio, to the Pitti Palace in Florence, has always been problematic. The renovated Vasari Corridor re-opened 450 years after the death of its creators: the Grand Duke Cosimo I dei Medici, who commissioned the Corridor on the occasion of the wedding of his son Francesco I and who passed away on 21 April 1574, and Giorgio Vasari, who designed and built it and who died on 27 June 1574, just two months after Cosimo I.

Entry to the renovated Vasari Corridor is available to everyone who has a ticket to enter the Uffizi Galleries and who has paid the Corridor visit supplement. Pre-booking a time slot and prepaying the supplement to access the Corridor is highly recommended. Visitors are grouped (groups of 25 persons) by time of entry and accompanied by two Uffizi staff members. You cannot leave the group nor linger long in the Corridor.

I am no longer enthusiastic about paying the extra to walk through the Vasari Corridor. The corridor is one-way. You enter from inside the Uffizi, walk over Ponte Vecchio through a 760 m hallway and exit at the Pitti Palace courtyard. You cannot walk back to the Uffizi through the corridor. You cannot retrieve anything from the Uffizi cloakroom. The museum is closed to you for the day. In addition, your Uffizi entry is locked to 2 hours before your corridor slot. Not earlier. The Uffizi needs 3 to 5 hours to explore thoroughly. This ticket caps you at 2 hours. You will rush the Botticelli rooms, skip the Caravaggios, and end the visit staring at your watch.
And what do you get for all this. A hallway. The famous self-portrait collection that made the corridor interesting is gone. 

The renovated Vasari Corridor

The ready accessibility of the corridor is very positive but I have to admit to feeling a bit sad about the relocation of the largest, oldest and most important collection of self-portraits in the world, which used to line the walls of the Corridor towards the Pitti Palace end. This collection, which was admirably displayed in the Corridor and directly linked to the creators of the Corridor, has been transferred to the Uffizi Galleries. The self-portraits have been replaced in the Corridor by a series of Roman epigraphs related to the Florence founded by Julius Caesar in 59 BC, and later becoming the capital of the VI Roman Legio that included Tuscany and Umbria. Obviously, these marble plaques are nowhere near as fragile as the paintings, so I suppose this is the price we must pay for free access to the Vasari Corridor.

 

The Vasari Corridor before renovation.

This, of course, is by no means the first time the Vasari Corridor has been renovated. Up until the late 19 C, there were artisanal workshops built into the arches supporting the Corridor between the Uffizi and the Ponte Vecchio. Those were removed during the 1880's.

View of the Vasari Corridor in the 1880's with workshops still in place.

For full official details for visits to the Vasari Corridor, click here.

More about the Vasari Corridor.

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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"Il Magnifico 1492" - a fabulous exhibition promised for Autumn 2026 at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence

Start planning now! The Uffizi have announced that they are putting together an exhibition for Autumn 2026 that will reconstruct part of the unequalled art collection assembled by Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici (1449-1492), "il Magnifico", as it was in the year of his death in 1492.

Portrait of Lorenzo il Magnifico by Vasari

More than a hundred works borrowed from around the world will form a reconstruction of some of Lorenzo's collection - the collection that helped earn him the description "Il Magnifico" - once housed in the Medici family palazzo in Via Larga, Florence - now the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. The exhibition is based on the description and inventory prepared in 1492, shortly after Lorenzo's death. The Uffizi promises us a selection of paintings and sculptures, including several famous masterpieces, as well as vases, gems, cameos, coins, codices, and maps, reflecting the interests and curiosity that were among the characteristic traits of the Medici family that ruled Florence and Tuscany between the 15 C and the 17 C.

Bronze medal of depicting Lorenzo il Magnifico

Lorenzo was a shrewd and capable politician and diplomat, and a fervent promoter of the arts, literature and philosophy, himself a poet and prolific letter writer, defining the very concept of patronage. He surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant intellectuals of his time, including Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, as well as supporting artists such as Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Verrocchio and Michelangelo, transforming Florence into the undisputed capital of the Renaissance.

Don't miss this exhibition if you will be anywhere near Florence during Autumn 2026!

More about the Medici family.

  

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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The Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence - last days

It's only a couple of days ago that I was able to visit the marvellous Fra Angelico exhibition currently on show at the San Marco Museum and the Strozzi Palace in Florence. The exhibition is in its final days and will end on 25 January 2026, so if you are in Florence now or have the possibility to be here before then, don't hesitate - this is an amazing display of the works of Fra Angelico of Fiesole (ca. 1395 - 1455) and other artists associated with him and his times. Fra Angelico was born around 1395, named Guido di Pietro, in the Tuscan area of Mugello near Fiesole, not far from Florence. He was one of the greatest painters of the late Gothic and early Renaissance during the 15C, his only competitor, and perhaps superior, in painting during the first part of his life being Masaccio who died at age 26, and Fra Filippo Lippi later. For this exhibition the organisers have gathered over 140 works from Florence and around the world. The exhibition catalogue follows the layout of the exhibition closely and contains illustrations of many of the works on display. Despite its expense (€80), the catalogue is indispensable. (I suspect it will show up on Amazon at a substantial discount after the exhibition closes.) I recommend that you book a time slot first for San Marco since the museum is open only in the morning, and then go on to Palazzo Strozzi after lunch, if you plan to see the entire exhibition in one day.

 

 

In this review, I'll emphasize some aspects of Fra Angelico's artistic output and other items on display that especially interested me and which might be less familiar to my faithful readers.

 

San Marco Museum

 

All of Fra Angelico's admirers as well as huge numbers of other art enthusiasts will already be familiar with the frescoes he painted in the monks' cells in the Monastery of San Marco by commission of his first and greatest patron, Cosimo de Medici, the Elder. These frescoes form the major part of the exhibition at San Marco. 

 

Fra Angelico: fresco in cell 7, The Mocking of Christ
 

In addition, there is a small but absorbing exhibition of items associated with the fanatical monk, Savonarola (1452 - 1498) who occupied Fra Angelico's former cell some thirty years after Fra Angelico had left the monastery. The famous portrait of Savonarola by Fra Bartolomeo can be viewed close up alongside an extremely expressive terracotta bust of Savonarola attributed to Marco della Robbia, later Fra Mattia (1468-1534). The display also includes a manuscript written by Savonarola in exquisite and minute script - BE SURE TO BRING A LARGE MAGNIFYING GLASS WITH YOU (see the next paragraph).

Terracotta bust of Savonarola attributed to Marco della Robbia 

 

The San Marco Monastery Library

 

The San Marco Library during the Fra Angelico Exhibition.

 

Not everyone realises that Fra Angelico was a skilled miniaturist and illustrator of illuminated manuscripts and this aspect of his artistic output should definitely not be thought of as being somehow a secondary activity, as indeed the exquisite examples of his illuminations on display in the library of San Marco Monastery demonstrate. Looking into the library from the main door, on the left are manuscripts and other sheets containing work by Fra Angelico while on the right are manuscripts that originally belonged to the library but which have been dispersed around the world following the depredations of Napoleon. Many of the manuscripts are humanistic works, some of them collected by the Medici family and donated to the library. The miniatures deserve to be examined under a magnifying glass in many cases. One example, which I can't find in the exhibition catalogue, is the only significant surviving page, the frontispiece, from Silius Italicus: De bello punico, 1450, a manuscript poem in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, illuminated by most likely by Zanobi Strozzi, who was strongly influenced by Fra Angelico. (Click the image to study the details, especially the birds.)

 

Another example, Saint Thomas Aquinas lecturing, from an Antiphonary for the Proper of Time, by Fra Angelico and collaborators, dating from about 1440-42.

 

 

 

The Strozzi Palace

The major part of the exhibition is located at the Palazzo Strozzi where almost all of the surviving major works by Fra Angelico are displayed. This part of the exhibition provides excellent insight into Fra Angelico’s artistic development and influence, and his relationship to painters such as Lorenzo Monaco, Masaccio, and Filippo Lippi, as well as sculptors like Lorenzo Ghiberti, Michelozzo, and Luca della Robbia.

Fra Angelico: the Coronation of the Virgin painted for the Church of Santa Maria Novella

 

When we first see the Coronation of the Virgin painted for the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence and the other works displayed around it, all the elements that a very expensive altarpiece of the 14 C was expected to provide leap out - a precisely tooled gold background, much azure, and much vermilion, the gilded haloes and gold-edged robes. What we are seeing at first seems all very Gothic but what makes this a Renaissance painting is the three dimensional depth and naturalism of the figures and the realism of their garments. The exhibition allows the viewer to follow Fra Angelico from Late Gothic to Early Renaissance - compare the images directly above and directly below.

 

Fra Angelico: Naming of St John the Baptist

 

I want to mention three other works from the period of Fra Angelico displayed here. The first is one of Luca della Robbia's masterpieces, the Virgin of the Apple ca. 1440-1445. Aside from the great beauty of this piece, where the only colour used is for the eyes of the Madonna and of the Child, a curiosity of the work is that the terracotta figures are placed against an apparently brocade design but which in fact includes two hidden paintings of the Madonna and Child, one painted overlaying the other. The more recent and visible painting is by Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio or his workshop, while the underlying work, viewed using infrared reflectography, is attributed to Domenico di Michelino (1417-1491).

 

Luca della Robbia the Virgin of the Apple

My faithful and intelligent readers will undoubtedly recall my obsession with the Medici family. I was delighted to be able to view up close an extremely evocative marble relief (but look at it from the left side - it's almost a sculpture in the round) of Cosimo de' Medici, the elder, by Antonio Rossellino  dating from ca. 1460-64. Cosimo was the first patron of Fra Angelico.

 

Antonio Rossellino: Cosimo de' Medici

 

Cosimo's son and the father of Lorenzo il Magnifico, was Piero (1416-1469), known as "the gouty" due to his sufferings from this disorder later in his short life. Not only is the bust of Piero on display a fine sculpture, it is one of the first objects of this kind where the provenance is clear. The various inscriptions under its base identify the artist as Mino da Fiesole, state that the subject is Piero de' Medici and that Piero was 37 years old at the time (1453-54).

 

 Mino da Fiesole: Piero di Cosimo de' Medici

 

As I staggered through this splendid exhibition (believe me, after three hours the legs grow weary), I was reminded again and again how Fra Angelico's originality, based on the foundations laid almost a century previously by Cimabue and then his pupil Giotto, finds expression in Fra Angelico's pupil Benozzo Gozzoli's portraiture and technical expertise in the art of fresco. Gozzoli links to Domenico Ghirlandaio and so to the latter's pupil Michelangelo and hence to the High Renaissance.

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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Almost 500 years since the death of Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli died almost 500 years ago on 21 June 1527 at the age of 58, and yet he lives on as a founder of modern political analysis and the inspiration for the expression "Machiavellian". He was a great Florentine who is probably too narrowly identified as the author of Il Principe (The Prince) which he wrote around 1513. It was published in 1532, five years after his death. For many years, Machiavelli served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He wrote comedies, carnival songs and poetry, and he has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science

Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito

In 1494, Florence restored the republic, expelling the Medici family that had ruled Florence for some sixty years. In August 1512, the Medici, backed by Pope Julius II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato. In the wake of the siege, Piero Soderini resigned as Florentine head of state and fled into exile. The experience would, like Machiavelli's time in foreign courts and with the Borgia, heavily influence his political writings. The Florentine city-state and the republic were dissolved, with Machiavelli then being removed from office and banished from the city for a year. In 1513, the Medici accused him of conspiracy against them and had him imprisoned. Despite being subjected to torture, he denied involvement and was released after three weeks.

L'Albergaccio - Casa Machiavelli

Machiavelli then retired to his farm estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, near San Casciano in Val di Pesa, where he devoted himself to studying and writing political treatises. During this period, he represented the Florentine Republic on diplomatic visits to France, Germany and elsewhere in Italy. A wonderful letter from Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, dated 10 December 1513, evokes Machiavelli's life in rural exile:

"When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; and at the door I take off my everyday clothes, covered in mud and dirt, and put on royal and courtly clothes; and dressed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, lovingly received by them, I feed on that food which is mine only and for which I was born; where I am not ashamed to speak with them and ask them the reason for their actions; and they, out of their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I do not feel any boredom; I forget every worry, I do not fear poverty, I am not frightened by death; I transfer myself entirely to them. And because Dante says that one does not make science without retaining what has been understood, I have noted what I have capitalised on through their conversation, and composed a pamphlet entitled Principatibus (Of Principalities, later published as in Italian as Il Principe)."

The main idea of Machiavelli's The Prince closely reflects the times in which he lived. An effective ruler must understand how to seize and maintain power rather than attain some kind of moral purity. In other words, princes should learn to rule rather than learn to be "good". As a treatise, the main contribution of "The Prince" to the history of political thought is the distinction it makes between political realism and political idealism. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli insisted that an imaginary ideal society is not a model that a prince should adopt. Joshua Kaplan maintains that Machiavelli emancipated politics from theology and moral philosophy. He undertook to describe simply what rulers actually did and thus anticipated the scientific spirit in which questions of good and bad are ignored, and the observer attempts to discover only what really happens.

Collected works of Machiavelli

Machiavelli was buried at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. In 1789 George Nassau Clavering and Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, initiated the construction of a monument on Machiavelli's tomb. It was sculpted by Innocenzo Spinazzi, with an epitaph by Ferroni inscribed on it.

Machiavelli's house is now a well-regarded restaurant where the room and table where Machiavelli worked are preserved and can be visited by patrons of the restaurant.

More about Niccolò Machiavelli.

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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Il Palazzo di Bianca Cappello in the Oltrarno of Florence, Tuscany

Il Palazzo di Bianca Cappello

During the first half of the 15 C, at Via Maggio 26, in the Oltrarno area of Florence, there was a palazzo belonging to the Corbinelli family, purchased in 1566 by Piero Buonaventuri, husband of the Venetian noblewoman Bianca Cappello. This palazzo was a setting of one of the most talked about love stories of the Renaissance, that between Bianca Cappello and Grand Duke Francesco de' Medici, son of Cosimo de' Medici. During the period in which they were still clandestine lovers, to meet secretly, Bianca and Francesco used an underground passage that starts from the cellars of the palazzo and reaches the Palazzo Pitti, a block away. During World War II, numerous art works from the Vasari corridor were stored in the passage for safekeeping. Today the passage is no longer passable.

 Bianca Cappello

After Bianca was widowed, she was able to modernise and embellish her palazzo under the supervision of Bernardo Buontalenti and with financial support from Francesco. The façade was renovated with rich graffito decoration created by Bernardino Poccetti.

On 12 October 1579, Francesco I de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello married for the second time amongst great celebrations, despite the hostility of the Medici family. The ceremony between the Grand Duke and the "Daughter of Venice" followed the one that had taken place secretly in June of the same year.
After the wedding, Bianca donated the palazzo to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova and subsequently the grotesques were painted on the façade.

Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici

This story remains intriguing right up until the present day, not least because of the tragic deaths of both Bianca and Francesco, within 24 hours of one another, at the Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano under suspicious circumstances that have never been clarified.

More about Francesco I de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello.

More about the Villas and palazzi of Tuscany.

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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