Get to know the most important places in the historical centre of Florence, its monuments, such as Piazza del Duomo, the splendid view from Ponte Vecchio and the scenic Piazza della Signoria. We will get to know the artists, their lives, their works and their patrons, especially those Florentine families, who, like the Medici, have marked the history of the city and have made Florence one of the most beautiful cities and rich in works of art.
I will show you Florence with its suggestive views, its changes from a Roman colony to a Renaissance city and the capital of Italy.
Walking in the medieval quarter you will relive the atmosphere and the events of the past, among the ancient tower houses and those alleys and squares once dear to the great poet Dante.
From a lively medieval city, made up of large construction sites such as the new Cathedral and the Government Palace, Florence experienced its greatest splendor in the first half of the fifteenth century, when artists such as Donatello and his friend Brunelleschi, started the "rebirth" of culture and art. In these years, it was above all the powerful and rich Florentine families who commissioned the most famous artists of the time to create architectural and decorative works for their homes, paintings, gardens and family chapels, thus demonstrating to the whole world, also through art, their wealth and high social, economic and cultural status.
Among these families, the Medici family predominated, which also contributed in an important way to the change and embellishment of the streets and public squares, such as fountains, churches, palaces and beautiful sculptures.
Come and discover them with me!
TOUR 2 HOURS
San Lorenzo and the Medici district
Piazza del Duomo
District of Dante
Piglet
Piazza Signoria
Piazzale degli Uffizi
Old Bridge
TOUR 3 HOURS
San Lorenzo and the Medici district
Piazza del Duomo
District of Dante
Piglet
Piazza Signoria
Piazzale degli Uffizi
Old Bridge
Pitti Square
Piazza Santo Spirito
Via Maggio and the antique dealers
Holy Trinity Bridge
Via Tornabuoni
Republic Square
Michelangelo and the Medici
We will go together to discover the places and the masterpieces of the great Renaissance artist, we will discover his life and his relationship with one of the most powerful families of his time, the powerful Medici family.
Michelangelo, the divine rebel, with his irascible and solitary character, torn by conflicting passions. He had the admiration of Popes and rich patrons, for whom he created masterpieces that we still admire today.
While still very young, he went to the famous painter Domenico Ghirlandaio's workshop, author of the famous frescoes in the Tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria Novella.
But it was in the school established by Lorenzo de Medici that the young artist was able to distinguish himself. It was in fact the Magnifico who, while strolling among the young apprentices while they were carrying out their works in the garden school of San Marco, noticed the boy while he was sculpting a faun's head. He was struck by this and decided to protect and follow the new talent in his education, including him in his cultural circle of philosophers and men of letters at Palazzo Medici.
For Lorenzo's successors, the artist was commissioned to design the façade of the church of San Lorenzo, which was never built and for which Michelangelo created a wooden model, now preserved in the Museo di Casa Buonarroti.
He was also the architect and sculptor for the church of San Lorenzo in one of the most famous places of the Renaissance, the splendid New Sacristy, which can be accessed from the entrance to the Medici Chapels.
In this room, where he achieved a perfect fusion of architecture and sculpture, are buried Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, killed in the Pazzi Conspiracy at Easter 1478 inside Florence Cathedral. It is here, on the burial monuments of two other family members, where his famous sculptures with the allegorical figures of Day, Night, Twilight and Dawn can be admired.
Entrance fees: Medici Chapels Church of San Lorenzo
Entrances are included in the tour, but when booking you can customize the visit according to your needs and interests.
Contact me to create your ideal itinerary together.
The Bargello Museum, from prison to museum
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.
We're rolling! Florence and the cinema
Walking through the streets of the center we will discover the places where great film directors have chosen the history and beauty of Florence as the irreplaceable setting for their masterpieces.
Films such as "Room with a View," "Hannibal," "Tea with Mussolini," and "Inferno" are films that give us splendid images of the city while making us dream with stories expertly directed by directors such as James Ivory, Ron Howard and Ridley Scott.
In fact, we will follow the footsteps of Professor Langdon, further and further down into hell, in that Dantean Florence shrouded in mystery, but also those places where Anthony Hopkins, playing Dr. Hannibal Lecter, will meet Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini), a descendant of the historical Florentine family, who will try to bring him to justice.
But a special place in the heart of Florence is for the Florentine director Franco Zeffirelli, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago, of whom we will visit the museum of the Foundation born in 2017, where we can admire stage costumes and more than 250 sketches and drawings that lead us through the life of the great director, a life completely dedicated to the world of theater and cinema. In his film "A Tea with Mussolini", starring the amazing Cher and actresses of the calibre of Maggie Smith and Joan Plowright, we relive the times and the lives of a group of English ladies in Fascist Florence.
Come and discover the magic of cinema!
Crimes and mysteries in Florence
Walking through the streets of the center you will easily be conquered by the special charm of Florence. Stendal knew something about it! If the stones of the ancient monuments could tell us about so many centuries of history, who knows how many episodes, voices, images, secrets they would like to reveal to us.
Have you ever wondered if, looking at a statue, maybe in Piazza della Signoria, behind the apparent perfection and beauty hides hidden meanings? Some of the most famous artists have had controversial personalities, restlessness and torment, sometimes with problems with the law and very serious charges. In those days it took very little to be tried, perhaps for false accusations made anonymously by some enemy.
This tour is for the most curious, to discover the mysteries, crimes and everything that Florence secretly guards. You will discover a different Florence, with its stories and unsolved mysteries from the past that still surprise us today and to which perhaps we still don't know how to give exact answers. Piazza del Duomo, April 6, 1478. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, sacred places often became privileged sites for conspiracies and murders. It was here that one of the most violent conspiracies in history was organized. It was the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici family, where the brother of the Magnifico, in front of the whole family during the celebration of Mass, was violently killed with nineteen stab wounds, and the revenge that followed was no less.
But who were the Pazzis? And what does Leonardo da Vinci have to do with it?
And Francesco de' Medici and his second wife Bianca Cappello, did they die of malarial fevers or were they murdered by the Medici family itself?
These and other mysteries will be the protagonists of our itinerary in the historical center of Florence, where we will visit the austere district where you can still breathe the atmosphere of the Middle Ages, with the tower houses and the dark streets where once took place bloody fights between rival families and violent executions, both in public places and in the courtyard of the Bargello, once a Florentine prison.
One of the most evocative places of the city was since the past the place of Florentine public events, including public executions. There are many mysteries and curiosities hidden in the sculptures and stones of Palazzo della Signoria, which looks like a real castle with its high tower where Cosimo dei Medici and Savonarola were imprisoned.
One of them was considered a heretic and burned in the middle of the square!
The museums of Palazzo Pitti
Once home to grand dukes and kings, the largest palace in Florence today houses some of the most important museums in the city, with spectacularly decorated rooms and rich collections of paintings, costumes, silverware, porcelain and the spectacular Boboli Gardens. Choose the museum you would like to visit, it will be fun to discover together the history of the sumptuous palace and the people who lived in it, to learn about the fashion of the past and how daily life was at court.
The name is still that of its first owner, Luca Pitti, a wealthy Florentine banker of the 15th century, who, in order to compete with the Medici palace on the other side of the Arno, wanted the windows to be larger than the doors of the Medici palace and for the courtyard to contain the entire palace of the other rivals, the Strozzi. Later purchased by the Medici for the size of the palace and the wonderful garden, the best architects of the time worked there, Ammannati, Giambologna, Tribolo, Pietro da Cortona, who made the residence increasingly sophisticated and envied.
The Medici, on the occasion of a wedding, created a special show in the large courtyard with the reconstruction of a naval battle between Christians and Turks, when, creating a large pool full of water, actors on war boats created a spectacle that stunned the lucky and prestigious guests. The palace was then inhabited and enriched by the Lorena family and finally by the Savoia family, Italian royalty from 1865, whose luxuriously furnished apartments can still be visited.
Precious and unmissable is the Palatina Gallery, with its rooms richly decorated with frescoes and stuccoes, where you can admire a unique collection of masterpieces by Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Lippi, and many others. On the ground floor is the Museo degli Argenti, in the part of the palace where the Medici family once moved during the hot summer months, where we can admire the rooms with magnificent frescoes and the precious collection of luxury objects.
Strolling along the avenues and hedges of the immense and elegant Boboli Gardens, among statues, palaces, fountains and grottos, with a breathtaking view over the city of Florence, is wonderful and relaxing. Entrances are included in the tour, but when booking you can customize the tour according to your needs and interests.
Some suggestions to enrich your visit:
Walk among the monuments
Old Palace
Bardini Garden
Contact me to create a personalized itinerary together that meets your interests and needs.