Find out why Duke Cosimo di Medici moved his family into the Palazzo Vecchio, the building which was originally his office, and how he and his Spanish wife Eleonora di Toledo made it both a symbol of the power of the Medici family and a comfortable home for themselves and their numerous children. Hear too how Machiavelli worked from here and listen to descriptions of his death mask and his office. Learn about some of the unfortunates who were imprisoned in the Torre di Arnolfo, the high crenelated tower which rises above the Palazzo and can be seen from all over Florence. Discover what to look out for in the various rooms included in the tours open to the public.
MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON
More information about Florence coming soon.
Listen to the POdcast
Links & Reading
3 useful websites for tourists
Feel Florence
Visit Florence
Destination Florence
4 guidebooks on Florence
Pocket Rough Guide to Florence
Time Out Florence City Guide
Blue Guide Florence by Alta Macadam
Strolling through Florence by Mario Erasmo
2 more guidebooks on Florence and Tuscany
Lonely Planet Guide to Florence and Tuscany
Eyewitness Travel Guide to Florence and Tuscany by Christopher Catling
3 history books and a guide to art and architecture
Florence, the Biography of a City by Christopher Hibbert
The Medici by Paul Strathern
The Medici by Mary Hollingsworth
Art and Architecture in Florence by Rolf C Wirtz
3 anthologies
Florence: A Traveller’s Reader by Edward Cheney
Florence Stories Everyman’s Library Pocket Classics
A Literary Companion to Florence by Frances King
2 memoirs of Florence
Florence: A Delicate Case by David Leavitt
A Florence Diary by Diana Athill
4 novels set in Florence
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone (Biographical novel about Michelangelo)
A Room with a View by E M Forster
Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel
