Castles · Tour

The Paintings Are Still Hung Where the Lorraine Put Them, Not by Date

The Pitti is the Palazzo Nuovo, the new palace, as against the Palazzo Vecchio, the old one. The Medici lived here, then the Lorraine grand dukes, and if you count the Kings of Italy, three reigning dynasties in the same building. Inside: state rooms, frescoes, and one of the best painting collections in Florence, with Raphael, Rubens, Titian and Caravaggio. The thing that makes the Palatine Gallery different from every other gallery you will visit is that it is not arranged. The pictures hang exactly where they hung in the Lorraine period, placed by personal taste rather than in the chronological order a museum would impose. You are looking at somebody's decisions, not a curator's. The visit also takes the Royal Apartments and the museum of the grand-ducal Treasure, where the number of precious objects on display is frankly difficult to take in at one go.