Florence dazzles at first glance – its Renaissance heart pulses in the Uffizi, the Duomo, and Ponte Vecchio. But wander a little deeper and you’ll find treasures that capture the city’s soul in unexpected ways.
In the Bargello, once a mediaeval prison, Donatello’s David – a bronze masterpiece of 15th-century Renaissance sculpture – seems conspiratorial, far from the crowds surrounding Michelangelo’s marble giant. The Stibbert Museum, a private 19th-century palazzo, houses arms and armour from samurai suits to Ottoman scimitars, a collector’s dream. Masaccio’s frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel depict early Renaissance biblical scenes with startling human realism.
Other hidden gems include La Specola, the anatomical wax museum of Enlightenment curiosities; the Ospedale degli Innocenti, Brunelleschi’s orphanage and a triumph of Renaissance architecture; the Museo Horne, a merchant’s house preserving domestic Renaissance treasures; and the Museo Novecento, dedicated to 20th-century Italian painters and sculptors.
