Castles · Tour

Eleven to One Inside the Palace, with the Tapestry Room and Giordano's Ceiling

Two hours inside the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, one of the buildings the Renaissance was invented in, and a straight look at how the most powerful family in Florence actually lived and worked. The group meets outside the palace at 11am. Cosimo de' Medici commissioned the building in the 15th century, and it stayed the family's official residence for over a century, which is how it became the symbol of what they were. In the 17th century it passed to the Riccardi family, who added the Baroque work. The visit covers the architecture and, for anyone who arrived via the television, the scenes from Medici: Lords of Florence, with Piero the Gouty and Lorenzo the Magnificent running alongside the history. Inside: the Chapel of the Magi with Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes, the private rooms, the tapestry room, and the work by Luca Giordano. The palace grounds also hold the garden where Michelangelo learned to sculpt under Bertoldo, one of Donatello's followers, which is a more important address in the history of art than its size suggests. The visit ends outside the palace at 1pm.