This visit will focus on the Salone dei Cinquecento, built under the influence of Girolamo Savonarola in 1494 to hold meetings of the Great Council of the Republic. The walls of that hall were to be decorated by Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina, which along with the latter’s statue of David (1501-1504) placed at its entrance, was to celebrate the brave, triumphant Florentine Republic prior to being overthrown by the Medici in 1530. Until Cosimo I’s wife Eleonora of Toledo purchased the Pitti Palace for the family’s residence in 1549, the Palazzo Vecchio was also the official residence of Florence’s ‘First Family’. We will visit the living quarters of the Duchess and her children, featuring Bronzino’s stunning paintings in the Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo.

Giambologna's Equestrian monument of Cosimo I de Medici outside Palazzo Vecchio, Florence