Palatine Gallery and Royal Apartments

     During your visit to Palazzo Pitti, one of the museums that you should really explore is the Palatine Gallery, which is home a large collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings. The museum was originally a gallery organized by the Medici to further display their wealth, as all of the art that they had collected could no longer fit into the Galleria degli Uffizi located across the river. Unlike the Uffizi however, the paintings are not displayed by time period or region, but rather are shown as they would have been while the nobility was living in the household. This makes the display unique in that you can see how the rooms would have looked like in the days when the Dukes of Tuscany still called Palazzo Pitti home.

During the time of the Medici family, the rooms that comprise the Palatine Gallery were the apartments of the Grand Duke and his audience rooms. They are partially covered in frescos created by Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) which form a representative example of Florentine Baroque, and pleasant backdrop for the paintings in the Gallery which are from the 16th to the 17th centuries. The Gallery, which also extends into the Royal Apartments, contains works by Raphael, Titian, Rubens, and Pietro da Cortona.
The Royal Apartments are the second part of the tour and comprise 14 rooms, formerly used by the Medici family and their successors. These rooms have been altered over time depending on the tastes of the ruling family and the popular styles of the time. For that reason, a variety of styles can be seen with layouts in the different rooms from different eras. The layout of the rooms has been constant since the time of Grand Prince Ferdinando dei Medici who lived in the Palazzo Pitti until his death in 1713. When Italy was united in the mid-19th Century, Florence for a short time became the capital of Italy and subsequently Palazzo Pitti became the home of the Italian royal family, with its head King Victor Emanuel II of Savoy. The décor of the throne room comes from this period, and does not date back to the Medici era. The royal family continued to use the rooms in the Palazzo until 1919 when King Victor Emmanuel III, the grandson of Emanuel II, gave the palace to the nation, becoming the museums we see today.

Practical Information:
• One ticket gains entrance to the Royal Apartments, the Palatine Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art, but the ticket is only good for the day so budget yourself enough time to see everything!
• When buying a ticket at Palazzo Pitti you will be able to choose option A or B. Ticket A will include Royal Apartments, the Palatine Gallery and the Modern Art Museum while B will gain entrance to the Boboli Gardens, Silver Museum, Costume Gallery, Porcelain Museum, and the Bardini Gardens. Pick one and don’t look back! There is plenty to see with either ticket.
• There is a security check to get into the palace including a metal detector, which can cause a line to form, especially if a tour group is entering all at once.
• For tips on where to eat around Palazzo Pitti, see our other posts!