ITINERARY 2
From the Piazza San Giovanni side of Piazza del Duomo, take Via Roma, another elegant shopping street. Cross Piazza della Repubblica with its' renowned coffee houses and open-air cafès to Via Calimala which leads to the Straw Market (Loggia del Porcellino). Then, proceed down Via Por Santa Maria to Ponte Vecchio, cross it, and continue down Via Guicciardini until your reach Palazzo Pitti whose sights include several museums and the Boboli Gardens. A street opposite the palace Sdrucciolo dei Pitti, leads to Santo Spririto. From the square take Via Sant'Agostino and the Via Santa Monica to reach the Carmine Church in the heart of San Frediano, one of the famous historic districts of Florence.
LOGGIA DEL PORCELLINO (Straw Market)The loggia was designed by Giovanni Battista del Tasso in 1511 as the fold and silk merchants' trade center. It is now the popolar marketplace everyone calls the Straw Market. Originally know as the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo (new market) it was later renamed after the bronze boar (procellino) adorning the fountain on the south of the square. This is a seventeenth century copy of a Hellenistic original now in the Uffizi.
PONTE VECCHIOFrom Antiquity there was always a bridge crossing the Arno at this point to connect Florence's most populated area with the Via Cassia. Every time one was destroyed by flood, another was built in this place. ( this one dates from the 14th century). The jewelry shops lining the bridge replaced the butcher shops banished by Fernidando I in the late 1500s. The windows along the top belong to the Corridoio Vasariano (see Galleria degli Uffizi).
PALAZZO PITTI This remarkable palace was designed by Brunelleschi around the mid 1400s for a rival of the Medicis, Luca Pitti. The original building was much smaller (running the lenght of only the seven central windows). It was remodeled and enlarged in the 16th century as a showplace worthy of its new owners: the Medici. Another Medici project, landscaping of the immense palace grounds, was carried out by Tribolo.
Extensive modification were also made in the 17th and 18th centuries. Today the palace is a museum, or rather complex of museums: the Palatine Gallery, the Monumental Apartaments, the Gallery of Modern Art, the Silver Museum, the Porcelain Museum, the Costume Gallery and the Coach Museum.
Use the main entrance in the middle of the building, which takes you into Ammannati's imposing courtyard. A staircase under the arcading on the right-hand side leads to the Palatine Gallery on the second floor. One of the major galleries of European painting in existence, it consist of twenty-five rooms lavishly adorned with frescoes by Pietro da Cortona and Ciro Ferri stucco decoration, and antique furniture.
Venus room: statue of Venus by Canova and others.
Apollo room: portraits of Charles I by Van Dyck and others.
Mars room: two famous Rubens and others.
Jupiter room: frescoes by Perugino , Fra bartolomeo, Bronzino.
Saturn room: some of Rapahel 's best know masterpieces.
Iliad room: painting's by Velazquez, Sustermans, Veronese.
Room of Education of Jupiter: Caravaggio and Cristofano Allori.
Ulysses room: Rapahel's "Madonna dell' Impannata".
Prometheus room: Pontormo, Botticelli and Filippo Lippi.
Corridoio delle Colonne: Dutch landascapist.
Justice room: Venetian masters.
Flora room: Andrea del Sarto and Florentine Mannerists.
Putti room: Rachel Ruysh.
Galleria Poccetti: Furini and Feti.
Allegory room: Volterrano and Giovanni San Giovanni.
The Gallery of Modern Art oh the third floor, features Italian 19th- early 20th century art, with a special focus on works of the Tuscan school.
The Silver Museum situated in the ground floor, has a fabulous collection of Medici and Lorraine heirlooms: jewels, enamels, carved ivories, precoius stones, and glassware. The highlights are 18th century Italian and German ebony furniture inlaid with ivory and semiprecious stones (chests, tables, and prayer stools) German carved ivories, jasper and lapis-lazuli vases, goblets, and flasks, the remarkable - and in truth, somewhat bizzare - jewel collection belonging to Maria Luisa, shell sculptures, as well as Oriental objects.
Exit from the palace, cross the great courtyard and enter the Boboli Gardens. The Boboli where the Porcelain Museum and the Costume Gallery are is one of the earliest examples of Italian-style landscaping and the forerunner of a host of parks and gardens throughout Italy and Europe. The project , entailing landscaping of acres of hillside, was commisioned by Eleonora del Toledo around mid.1500s but continued well into the 18th century.
The result is rather complex there are pools, fountains, statuary , miniature forests, lawns, flowerbeds, greenhouses and even an amphitheater. Of special note are a man-made Giotto, the Grotta del Buontalenti(1588) once adorned with Michelangelo's statues of Slaves or Prisons (now in Accademia) and the Oceanus Fountain designed by Gianbologna. The Carriage Museum contains interesting example of coaches and carriages from the times of the Medici and Lorraine.
An Early Renaissance building designed by Brunelleschi in 1444 it was finished by Manetti in 1487. The slightly later bell tower (1517) was designed by Baccio d'Agnolo. The interior is a notable example of Brunelleschi's masterful use of space: an effect of harmony and balance is achieved through the regular succession of spaces marked by the columns sweeping the eye to the focal point of the building, the dome-crowned crossing. Among the masters whose works are to be found in the church are Filippo Lippi, Sansovino and Rossellino.
SANTA MARIA DEL CARMINEFounded in the 13th century, it underwent extensive remodeling. Its present appearance dates from the 18th century. The church's claim to fame is the Brancacci Chapel in the right trasept, frescoed by Masaccio. Masaccio's master, Masolino commssioned by a wealthy merchant, Felice Brancacci, began work on the chapel in 1425 but the project was soon taken over by his pupil whose treatment of figures in believable space made the frescoes among the most important to have come out of the Early Renaissance. The scenes by Masaccio are the Expulsion from Paradise, The Tribute Money St Peter Healing a Lame-Man , and St Peter Raising Tabitha from the dead. The cycle was finished by Filippino Lippi.
