Palazzo Pitti

Purchased in 1550 by Cosimo I de’Medici and his wife Eleonora di Toledo, Palazzo Pitti was transformed into the Medici’s new Grand-Ducal residence and soon became the symbol of the power consolidated by the Medici family in Tuscany. The palace will later be used as a residence by the Habsburg-Lorraine Dynasty (successors of the Medici Family from 1737) and the Savoy Dynasty, who lived there as the Royal family of Italy from 1865. Palazzo Pitti still bears the name of its first owner, the Florentine banker Luca Pitti, who in the mid-fifteenth century wanted to build it from scratch – perhaps using a design by Brunelleschi – beyond the Arno, at the foot of the Boboli hill.

It is currently home to four different museums: the Treasury of the Grand Dukes on the ground floor, the Palatine Gallery and the Imperial and Royal Apartments on the noble floor of the Palace, the Modern Art Gallery and the Museum of Fashion and Costume on the second floor.