Florence and the Medici Tours / Palazzo Vecchio

description

Guided Tour of Palazzo Vecchio: it has preserved over the centuries its function as the center of the city's political life.

It was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio at the end of the thirteenth century to house the 'Priors of the Guilds' and the 'Gonfaloniere of Justice', the highest magistrates of Florence. The palace was first the headquarters of the Priors, then the seat of the Florentine Republic, and later transformed and enlarged by the Medici, when it became the new residence of the Dukes of Florence.

While preserving the original appearance on the outside of a medieval fortress, Palazzo Vecchio was profoundly altered and expanded, especially since the end of the fifteenth century, when it became the seat of the Florentine Republic.

With the arrival of the Medici, who moved there in 1540, the austere building received new magnificent decorations, more suited to the luxurious court life of the grand dukes of Florence. Giorgio Vasari and his collaborators were the architects of the complex renewal program ordered by Duke Cosimo I.

During the guided tour we will admire the majestic Hall of the Five Hundred and the Apartments of Leo X, with the splendid frescoes celebrating the illustrious Medici pope. On the Second Floor, the Apartments of the Elements and the Grand Duchess Eleonora di Toledo's Apartment will amaze you with its refined decorative richness, up to the Hall of Geographical Maps, veritable compendium of the most erudite cartographic knowledge of the time.