For Pitti’s Sake!

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Ian thought of that title!

The Pitti Palace it was today, for Bev and me. Umbrellas and puffer jackets were needed this morning. Fortunately the palace is only about 200 metres up the road. We’re real locals now. We took the rubbish and dropped it off at the community bins on the way.

An austere, brutalist-looking palace belies the treasures within. Surprisingly it was designed by Brunellesschi, he of the Duomo’s magnificent dome. The sun on it at sunset lightened it a bit. Armed with our new Friends of the Uffizi card we got our tickets and were straight in, starting with the Grand Duke’s Treasury. Before we could look at them though, we were very impressed with the wall paintings in the reception rooms and at how perspective was used to show features such false vaulted ceilings. The visitor was observed and waved at by life-like painted people on painted balconies.

Upstairs we went to the cameo room where there were exquisite examples, tiny intricate brooches and quite large ones too. Next door were very small animal brooches based on misshapen baroque pearls. A pearl spider anyone? And finally we came across two impressive antique tiaras together with more modern jewellery.

The costume gallery, instead of showing fashions of past centuries had extraordinarily modern haute couture as you can see from the photos. Sequins abound!!!

We’ll go back to see the Royal Apartments so thought we would venture into the Boboli Gardens. The horseshoe shaped first level garden was made from the hole in the hill that was made from mining the rocks that built the palace.

A rest was needed after that so we hopped on the C3 bus to see where it went in relation to the Palazzo Corsini al Prato, where we needed to be the next day. It’s right on the edge of what was the western medieval city boundary. But first we did a tiki tour right out beyond Santa Croce in the east and back again. We crossed the river at least three more times all on different bridges as we made our way west. The trouble was when we got out there the bus went down the street parallel to Via Della Scala as it was one way, the other way! Not to worry we thought we could just walk as it wasn’t far. Another tiki tour back and we alighted outside the Pitti Palace, our closest stop.

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Photos

Duchessa Della Rovere
Wife of Ferdinand dei Medici. Made from two colours of stone. The hood is extraordinary. She has real presence all these years later.

More cameos
The bottom one is about 4 inches high

This had a huge pink bow at the back
Note the red dress in the background

The back of the Palace complete with Egyptian obelisk
Brought to Italy in 70AD