photo Lorenzo Cotrozzi

March 21, 2025

Florence's historic palaces: architectural masterpieces not to be missed

A journey among historic mansions in the city amid art, culture and Renaissance architecture

Those who walk with their noses upward in a city like Florence can make small and great discoveries every day that give the pleasure of understanding how a frieze or an inscription chases each other from a basilica (the magisterial Santa Maria Novella) to a palace (that of the Rucellai on Via della Vigna Nuova), or look with wonder at how a family after more than five centuries continues to reflect itself in the Arno from the same elegant windows (as happens to the Corsini and Ricasoli families).

Entering these palaces is not easy, but their architecture can become a unique opportunity to get to know them.

Palazzo Antinori

Built in the years 1461-1469, it was designed by Giuliano da Maiano. From the wealthy Boni family, which had it built, it was purchased in 1506, after passing into Martelli hands, by Niccolò di Tommaso Antinori. The facade has few ornaments, the lines are simple but bright, and it represents the characteristic home of a Florentine who had made his fortune through trade and gained solid social prestige. The various members of the Antinori family always distinguished themselves between public office and private virtue. Their name is linked to the historic winery producing famous wines, a sign of which is still the small window on the alley of Trebbio from which the bottles were sold, as can be seen by the inscription “vino” on the frame (Piazza Antinori, 3).

Palazzo Corsini in Parione

Maddalena Machiavelli, widow Corsini, donated the property to her eldest son Bartolomeo Corsini senior, and from then on (1650) the expansion of the palace began, with the work of architects such as Alfonso Parigi the younger and Ferdinando Tacca. Inside is the “snail,” a splendid spiral staircase by Pier Francesco Silvani, who worked with Giovan Battista Foggini, while Antonio Ferri is credited with the facade on the Lungarno and of the elevations on the courtyard. Overall, the transformation work continued until about 1737. The interior of the palace contains the statue representing Clement XII (Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini), sculpted in 1737 in Rome by Girolamo Ticciati, Foggini's favorite pupil, to be donated by the Pontiff to his family. The palace suffered severe damage during World War II, in August 1944. (Lungarno Corsini 10 o via del Parione, 11).

Palazzo Gondi

At the end of the 15th century, the foundations were laid for Giuliano Gondi's palace, designed by Giuliano da Sangallo, with its alternating, baulked ground-floor and first-floor drafts forming designs.
In the harmonious courtyard the outer flight of stairs leads to the upper floor; later is the beautiful fountain. Characteristic is the “seggetta da via” of stone, typical Florentine, along the facade. The Gondi family had houses in the Santa Maria Novella district and near the Palazzo della Signoria; here Gondi bought other houses and on the area Sangallo was commissioned to build the palace, which was inhabited from the early 1500s. In the late 1600s completion work was directed by Antonio Ferri, while the vicissitudes of the palace ended in 1870, when the then Marquis commissioned architect Poggi to extend the facade (piazza San Firenze, 2).

Palazzo Medici-Tornaquinci

A palace that today presents itself with what was its 15th-century appearance and has experienced in its rooms the events that swirled through the city along decades of political and private clashes. In the 13th century the Ghibelline Soldanieri had the buildings in this area expropriated in favor of the Strozzi family, and a century later they became the home of Palla Strozzi, who lived here while waiting for them to build the palace of the same name. Changes in ownership made it the property of the Altoviti family from 1610 to 1835, while not even twenty years later it became the property of the Medici-Tornaquinci family. The fusion of the two 14th-century houses (and the two courtyards with 18th-century staircase) is still recognizable in the four-story facade and the loggia added in the 16th-century (via Tornabuoni, 6).

Palazzo Rucellai

The construction is set in the years 1446-1451 shortly thereafter. The original design is due to Leon Battista Alberti, who considered this palace almost an exemplification of his De Re Aedificatoria. Indeed, the upper floors are distinguished by elegant mullioned windows with two lights, and important is the use of the three classical orders on the facade; the frieze on the ground floor contains the three family insignia. Giovanni Rucellai, whose second son Bernardo married Nannina, sister of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in June 1466, began the construction. Together with the Pitti Palace, the Rucellai's represents the first variant of 15th-century Florentine palaces, after the one built by Michelozzo for Cosimo the Elder de' Medici. In the 1990s it housed the Fratelli Alinari Museum of the History of Photography (via della Vigna Nuova, 18).

Palazzo Guicciardini

The Guicciardini palace, on the street that bears their name, is the result of several buildings constructed in various eras. Beginning with the ancient towers of the Malefici and the Guicciardini, and continuing with the Benizzi house purchased in 1515. Here, when the façade was not yet architecturally unified, the historian Francesco Guicciardini was born in 1483, and for centuries members of the family were protagonists in the life of the Florentine state. The main restoration of the palace was carried out in 1620-1625 by Gherardo Silvani, who succeeded in giving the Guicciardini houses the appearance of a unified palace. Inside are preserved decorations with stucco work by Pasquale Poccianti and paintings by Luigi Sabatelli (via de' Guicciardini, 15).

Palazzo Frescobaldi

The Frescobaldi family had their oldest houses in the nearby square that bears their name, close to the bridge at Santa Trinita. The family was among the largest in Florence in the 13th and 14th centuries, and it was in these houses that they hosted Charles of Anjou, king of Naples, and, in 1301, Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair, king of France. Since the 15th century, the Frescobaldi had houses along Via Santo Spirito, later remodeled and enlarged, including a large garden, bordering the church that gives the street its name; as a whole, it can be said that-among the large apartments of Florence's historic families, those of the Frescobaldi family have remained among the most complete and authentic in terms of furnishings and works of art (via Santo Spirito, 11/13).

Palazzo Pandolfini

Close to the third circle of the fourteenth-century walls and to Porta San Gallo in today's Piazza della Libertà, only one private building had been built in this area occupied by convents and monasteries, vegetable gardens and gardens: the palace of Bishop Giannozzo Pandolfini today on Via San Gallo. Vasari testifies that the author of the design of the palace was Raphael Sanzio and it is to be considered the most important Urbino architecture that has come down to us, the construction of which was directed by another architect, Giovan Francesco da Sangallo. Bequeathed from one generation to another of the Pandolfini family, in the mid-19th century Count Alessio married the Englishwoman Sofronia Stibbert - sister of Federigo (who donated his vast scholarly collection to Florence) and devoted himself to a general restoration of the palace, in whose large garden his wife cultivated fine camellia plants (via San Gallo 74).

Palazzo Capponi delle Rovinate

The Capponi and the Strozzi are among all Florentine families those who built the most palaces in the city and villas in the countryside, and the former were one of the most important lineages during the Republic and held the office of Gonfalonieri di Giustizia, that is, heads of state, ten times. From the early 14th century the lineage was divided into two major lines: that of Cappone and that of Neri. Descended from Cappone, Niccolò (1406-1484) had with the Da Uzzano inheritance the Delle Rovinate palace on Via dei Bardi. His direct descendants, the Capponi counts, still inhabit the oldest of the family's many estates. This palace is known as “Delle Rovinate” because the overlooking Poggio Dei Magnoli ruined several times, with all its houses, down the street. The palace was built in the early fifteenth century by Niccolò da Uzzano, and Vasari informs us that its architect would have been the painter Lorenzo di Bicci (via de' Bardi, 36).

Palazzo Ginori

As early as the 15th century, the Ginori family owned many houses in the Borgo di San Lorenzo, near the Medici family church, and their palace was built on the site of these houses of theirs between about 1416 and 1420, apparently designed by Baccio D'Agnolo. Inside, the palace encloses a 16th-century courtyard with porticoes on all four sides. At the end of the seventeenth century some work was done to enlarge the building to adapt it to the needs of the time and of the family; the exterior work was entrusted to the architect Lorenzo Merlini and the interior, embellishment work to Antonio Ferri; during the first half of the eighteenth century the palace was enlarged again and all the furnishings renewed. Carlo Ginori is credited with founding the company of the first porcelains created in the historic Doccia factory, and a descendant of his, a namesake, was the first to own and drive an automobile on the streets of Florence (via di Novoli, 24).

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