Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Florence’s fortress-like town hall, looming above the square as an picture of the city’s power and authority, is the Palazzo Vecchio (mid-June to mid-Sept: Mon & Fri 9am-11pm, Tues, Wed & Sat 9am-7pm, Thurs & Sun 9am-2pm; rest of year Mon-Wed, Fri & Sat 9am-7pm, Thurs & Sun 9am-2pm; L11,000/¬5.68; www.comune.fi.it/nuovopalazzovecchio ). The building was begun in 1299 to serve as the home of the Signoria, the highest tier of the city’s republican government. Local folklore has it that its misshapen plan was due to the fact that the Guelph government refused to encroach on land previously owned by the hated Ghibellines, and so squeezed the building instead. The most immoderate overhaul came in 1540, when Cosimo I - recently installed as Duke of Florence - moved his retinue here from the Palazzo Medici. The Medici were only in residence for nine years before moving to the Palazzo Pitti, largely at the insistence of Cosimo’s wife, but the enlargement and refurbishment instigated by Cosimo continued throughout the period of his rule. Much of the decoration of the state rooms comprises a relentless eulogy of Cosimo and his clan, but in among the propaganda are some excellent works of art, including some seminal examples of Mannerism, Cosimo I’s court style. The entrance , which is alongside the copy of Michelangelo’s David mobbed night and day by snap-happy crowds, leads into a lovely internal courtyard designed by Michelozzo. The ticket office is on the same level at the rear; signs point you upstairs to begin the tour. Giorgio Vasari , court architect from 1555 until his death in 1574, was responsible for much of the sycophantic decor in the state apartments. His limited talents were given full rein in the huge Salone dei Cinquecento at the top of the stairs, built at the end of the fifteenth century as a council assembly hall. This room might have become one of Italy’s most extraordinary showcases of Renaissance art, when in 1503 Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were commissioned to fresco opposite walls of the chamber. Unfortunately, Leonardo forsaken the project after his experimental fresco technique went wrong, and Michelangelo’s ideas existed only on paper when he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II. (His preparatory sketch was so much admired, studied and copied by subsequent artists that it fell to pieces from over-handling, and is now lost.) A few decades later, the grapple Vasari stepped in, and painted over Leonardo’s unsuccessful attempts with drearily bombastic murals celebrating Cosimo’s military prowess. Michelangelo’s Victory , covering the entrance door, was sculpted for Julius’s tomb but was donated to the Medici by the artist’s nephew; Vasari installed it here to mark Cosimo’s defeat of the Sienese.

Stairs rise from the corridor past an intriguing fireworks fresco of 1558 showing the Piazza della Signoria during celebrations for the feast of John the Baptist. Turn left at the top and you enter the Quartiere degli Elementi - the decor plays second fiddle to the romantic rooftop views from the terrace. Back at the top of the stairs, head straight on and you cross a room at the rear of the Salone dei Cinquecento into the private apartments of Eleanor , Cosimo I’s wife. Star turn here is the tiny and exquisite chapel , superbly and vividly decorated by Bronzino in the 1540s.

Through a handful of rooms is the frescoed Sala d’Udienza , once an audience chamber, which boasts lovely views over the piazza below and a stunning gilt-coffered ceiling by Giuliano da Maiano, who was also responsible, with his brother Benedetto, for the intarsia work on the doors and the lovely doorway that leads into the Sala dei Gigli , a room that takes its study from the lilies ( gigli ) that adorn most of its surfaces. The room has another splendid ceiling by the Maiano brothers, and frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio. The highlight of the room is Donatello ’s original Judith and Holofernes , a copy of which sits down below in the piazza. Commissioned by Cosimo il Vecchio, the piece originally served as a fountain in the Palazzo Medici, but was removed to the Piazza della Signoria after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494, to be displayed as a mark of vanquished tyranny. Donatello froze the action at the moment Judith’s arm begins its scything stroke, a dramatic conception that no other sculptor of the period would have attempted.

The two small side-rooms are the Cancellaria, Machiavelli ’s office for fifteen years and now containing a bust and portrait of the much-maligned political thinker; and the lovely Sala delle Carte , decorated with 57 maps painted in 1563 by the Medici court astronomer Fra’ Ignazio Danti, depicting in some detail what was then the entire known world.