Pitti Palace

The Pitti Palace was begun in 1458 as the Florentine town residence of the banker Luca Pitti, a rival of the ruling Medici family whose own palace it was reportedly built to outdo in scale. The Medici themselves purchased the building in 1549, after which it became the chief residence of the ruling family of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, who enlarged it considerably and laid out the extensive Boboli Gardens behind it. Its Renaissance facade is defined by heavy rusticated stonework and arch-headed openings that architectural historians have compared to Roman aqueduct construction, giving the palace a fortress-like severity unusual among Florentine city palaces. Today the roughly 32,000 square meter complex functions as the largest museum complex in Florence, holding the Palatine Gallery, a Gallery of Modern Art, a Porcelain Museum and a Costume Gallery among its collections, including more than 500 Renaissance paintings and richly frescoed rooms painted by Pietro da Cortona. The Vasari Corridor, an elevated passageway built for the Medici, connects the palace directly to the Palazzo Vecchio across the Arno, and the Pitti Palace was included within Florence's historic center when UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1982.