Palazzo Pitti

Florence's princely Renaissance Pitti Palace was once home to the Medici, the Lorraines, and the Savoy Kings of Italy—now a whole series of museums

Palazzo Pitti (Pitti Palace)
Piazza Pitti (cross the Ponte Vecchio and follow Via Guicciardini; you can't miss it)
tel. +39-055-238-8614
www.polomuseale.firenze.it
Open Tues–Sun 8:15am–6:50pm (though only the two art galleries close that late year-round; the other museums and gardens close at varying times throughout the year, as late as 8:50pm in summer but as early as 4:30pm in winter).
The Boboli Gardens are closed only the first and last Mon of each month.

Sights nearby
Santo Spirito [church]
** Santa Maria della Carmine [church]
*** Ponte Vecchio [bridge]
* San Miniato al Monte [church]
** Piazzale Michelangiolo [viewpoint]

Where to eat nearby
* La Casalinga [meal]
Le Volpe e l'Uva [snack]
* Il Cantinone [meal]
* EnotecaBar Fuori Porta [snack/light meal]

Hotels nearby
Floroom 1 [premier]
Hotel Lungarno [premier/splurge]
Vivahotel Pitti Palace al Ponte Vecchio [moderate/premier]
Hotel La Scaletta [cheap/moderate]
Florence Old Bridge B&B [cheap]
Bed and Breakfast In Florence [super-cheap/cheap]
» More hotels near the Pitti Palace

ReidsItaly.com Florence Map

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TOURS FROM OUR TRUSTED PARTNERS that include Florence

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• Best of Italy (15 days)
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• Tuscan Express (7 days)

G Adventures 2011 Italy trips
• Ultimate Italy (13 days)
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• The Taste of Tuscany (8 days)
• Venice to Rome Adventure (8 days)
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• Italy Experience (9 days)
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Palazzo Pitti a Firenze
The Palazzo Pitti exterior—just one half; it's a big sucker. (Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto)This massive palace across the river that was once home to the Medici Grand Dukes now houses a plethora of museums and one heck of a painting gallery that makes the Uffizi look like a preamble.

You literally could not visit all six of its museums and the Boboli Gardens in a single day. However, an hour and a half to two hours will suffice for a run through the best part: the main paintings collection in the Galleria Palatina.

The Galleria Palatina

The Galleria Palatina museum in the Palazzo Pitti of Florence These richly decorated rooms, many frescoed by baroque master Pietro da Cortona, are set up to look very much the way it did in the 18th century.

In other words, rather than a didactic, curated parade of paintings arranged, say, chronologically or by school or style, it's a more aesthetic arrangement along the lines of: "Hmm, now does this Raphael go with those drapes, or should we put the Rubens there instead?" Love it.

The galleries contain masterworks by a panoply late-Renaissance and baroque geniuses like Caravaggio, Rubens, Perugino, Giorgione, Guido Reni, Fra Bartolomeo, Tintoretto, Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Pontormo, Beccafumi...the list goes on and on.

"Madonna col Bambino tra Santa Rosa e Santa Caterina di Alessandria" by Pietro Perugino (1493-95) in the Galleria Palatina of the Palazzo Pitti
Pietro Perugino's "Madonna and Child with Sts. Rosa and Catherine of Alexandria" (c. 1493-95) in the Galleria Palatina of the Pitti Palace.The Palatina is especially strong in works by Raphael, Titian, and Andrea del Sarto.

The Royal Apartments

This palace housed the Italian royal family when Florence was briefly (1865–70) capital of the newly unified Italy.

The Appartamenti Reali (Royal Apartments), while they don't hold a candle to those at Versailles and other northern European palaces, are still a sight to behold in their neo-baroque and Victorian splendor or rich fabrics, frescoes, and oil paintings.

They aren't always open to the public, but when they are, they are well worth taking a spin through.

The Boboli Gardens

The Boboli Gardens at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence
The Boboli Gardens at the Pitti Palace. (Photo by Deror avi) If you only see two parts of the Pitti, make it the Galleria Palatina (above) and the Giardini di Boboli (Boboli Gardens), one of the finest Renaissance parks anywhere, laid out between 1549 and 1656.

This statue-filled park features fountains, grottoes, a rococo Kaffehaus for stylish refreshment in summer, grassy meadows for relaxing, and some pleasant wooded areas in which to get lost.

It's also where the world's first true opera premiered (see the box below to the right).

The other Pitti museums

As for the rest of the Pitti Palace, here is a quick rundown of the various lesser collections roughly in order of general interest. (Apologies if you have a particular love of old carriages and can't understand why I stuck them last; this ordering is meant for general audiences.)

The Galleria d'Arte Moderna (Modern Art gallery) has some good works by the Macchiaioli school, the Tuscan variant on Impressionism, which means lots of quietly noble cows standing about fields by the likes of Giovanni Fattori. Open 8:15am–6:50pm.

The Birth of Opera
In 1589, the Medici held a wedding reception in the Boboli Gardens, and for the occasion commissioned musical entertainment from Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini. The composers came up with the novel idea of setting a classical story (Dafne) to music and having actors sing the whole thing. Thus was opera born. The team later collaborated on Erudice (1600), which also premiered here and whose score has survived as the oldest opera.The Galleria del Costume (Costume Gallery) is what it sounds like, with some fabulous dresses dating back to the 1500s.

The Museo degli Argenti (Silver Museum) is a decorative arts collection that seems primarily concerned with showing off the relentless and increasingly bad taste of various Grand Dukes, but it does have kitsch value.

There are also Museo delle Porcellane (Museum of Porcelain)—like the Silver Museum, but full of the breakable tablewares—and the (perennially closed) Museo delle Carozze (Museum of Carriages), in which you can marvel at how the later Medici pimped their rides.

Tips

Planning your day: Budget at least two hours for a cursory visit of just the Galleria Palatina and Appartamenti Reali. If you plan to venture into the Boboli Gardens, give it another hour. If you have only passing interest in the other museums, each will take about 20 minutes.
Use the Firenze Card: The major parts of the Pitti Palace complex (Galleria Palatina, Apartamenti Reali, Boboli Gardens, and Porcelain Museum) are covered by the Firenze Card—free admission, no waiting in line.
Get the cumulative ticket. If all you're into is the art, you can get a ticket covering just the Galleria Palatina and Modern Art Gallery for €8.50. If, however, you'd like to wander the rest of the collections (and gardens) as well, don't spend another €6 or €7 on the separate collective ticket. Instead, get the "biglietto cumulativo," an all-access pass for €11.50 that lets you into all the Pitti galleries, apartments, and gardens for three days.
Arrive late and save: You can get a cut-rate cumulative ticket for €9 that's still valid for three days but comes with one catch: it only allows you in after 4pm (leaving you roughly three hours inside before its closes). Especially if you happen to be staying in the Oltrarno (and hence have to head back to the neighborhood every day anyway), this could work out quite nicely. Just leave a bit of the Pitti for the end of each day: the art one afternoon; the other museums the next, and an early picnic dinner in the gardens on the last.
Warning: The Pitti Palace seems to revel in closing a handful of its (lesser) museums for years at a time. Just which ones will be closed at any given time and for how long works on some mysterious schedule I have yet to discern. Check before visiting if missing, say, the costume gallery or the porcelain museum will spoil your vacation.

The Palazzo Medici-Riccardi - Where the Medici lived before they moved into these digs
The Uffizi Galleries - The Medici's private offices, now one of the world's top museums
The Medici clan
The museums of Florence
More sights in the Oltrarno

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This material was last updated January 2011. All information was accurate at the time.

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