PALAZZO PITTI, Grand Dukes' Treasure - First Halls

All around the fresh, cozy Cortile della Fama, you can visit the apartments that the Grand Duke of Tuscany stayed in when here over the summer. Here in the most beautiful of Palazzo Pitti's frescoed rooms, you'll see the fabulous Tesoro dei Granduchi, or Grand Dukes' Treasure, which was once called the Argenti Museum: it is a truly unique collection that conveys all the Medici's passion for unusual and extravagant objects and rare and precious materials.

Twenty-six halls await you with so many surprises and thrills: from jewelry masterpieces to sculpted cherry kernels, from carved ivory to central American ornaments made with hummingbird feathers, from pearls with bizarre shapes to coral branches, and so on. You can really get lost admiring display case after display case, amazed by the family's taste and curiosity. So I'll point out the pieces that you absolutely can't miss.

Start with Lorenzo the Magnificent's Collection of Vases, which includes a collection of containers of different shapes that are from different ages and origins: there are late antique goblets, Byzantine vases, Arabian urns, Venetian containers, and Oriental amphorae. The materials are all rare and precious and are further embellished by the elegant 15th-century silver frames.

Then you'll reach the great Hall of Giovanni da San Giovanni. In this solemn state room, in the first half of the 17th century the Tuscan painter Giovanni da San Giovanni painted an amazing series of celebratory frescoes about the history of Florence and the members of the Medici dynasty.

Next to the hall you can visit a small chapel with seventeenth-century sacred silver furnishings. Next are the halls where the Grand Dukes lived in the summer months. The three main rooms are decorated with architectural frescoes from the 1600s depicting lavish natural landscapes. I recommend paying special attention to the period furniture: partly Florentine with beautiful inlays of pietra dura and colored marble, and partly German in dark wood with silver, mother-of-pearl, and ivory inserts. The pièce de resistance is the eighteenth-century Palatine Stipo dell’Elettore, a masterpiece of cabinet-making from Florence with golden bronze sculptures and pietra dura inserts.

FUN FACT: in this museum, don't forget to admire the showcase furniture the objects are displayed in! In fact, they are original Baroque furnishings and are an integral part of the collection. As was customary in collections of rare and unusual curiosities, the objects are sorted according to their material: lathed ivory, amber, rock crystal, colored marble, and so on.