Come and visit one of the oldest and most suggestive palaces of the city, the Bargello, the first national museum in Italy, from government palace to Florentine prison, with its rooms and austere architecture that take us back to ancient Florence.
Dedicated to Renaissance sculpture, it displays masterpieces such as Michelangelo's Bacchus and Donatello's famous David.
The Bargello, the city's oldest government building, with its marvelous courtyard once used for executions, its rooms used as cells on the upper floors, and its bell at the top of the tower, which if you heard it ringing was never for good news, and generally indicated that someone was about to be executed. Only later, with the Lorraines in town, did it function to remind the citizens of the curfew, around 10 o'clock in the evening.
In 1865, restoration work was carried out to create the National Museum of the Bargello, initially to find a portrait of Dante, according to Vasari painted by Giotto and in the chapel of the palace, once for the last prayers of the condemned man. The news was correct, and the fresco, hidden under coats of plaster, came back to light.
Visiting the museum we will see up close works by Michelangelo and other artists among the most famous of the sixteenth century, such as Giambologna, author of some beautiful statues in Piazza della Signoria and in the Medici gardens, Benvenuto Cellini, goldsmith and sculptor by the iroso character that stained his life with murders, but of which we still admire valuable works including the famous Perseus in Piazza della Signoria.
In the rooms on the upper floors there are also very rich collections of ivories, chests, majolica and precious objects, which will tell us about the life and customs of the past. But the palace houses, in the ancient great hall, one of the most famous statues of the Florentine Renaissance, then also a symbol of the Italian film award, the famous David di Donatello. It was the first nude statue in the round since the classical era, created for a family that could certainly afford this novelty and moreover made of an expensive and prestigious material such as bronze, the Medici.
