It’s hard to imagine Florence, the Cradle of the Renaissance, without its avaricious, venial, and culture-conscious first family, the Medici. Crowned or uncrowned, they largely ruled the city-state, or schemed
If you’ve been to the Uffizi before, you know the drill. You make your way through the early rooms, gather momentum, and eventually land in front of Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo,
In 1975, workers pried open a locked storage room beneath Michelangelo’s New Sacristy at the Medici Chapels in Florence. Under layers of dirt, the walls revealed dozens of fragile charcoal
Castagno’s The Last Supper is an almost unknown masterpiece. This huge beauty covers one wall in the refectory of Florence’s 15th century Sant’Apollonia convent, near San Marco Monastery. It’s one of Florence’s
Leonardo da Vinci may be the most famous artist in the world. He was a towering figure of the Renaissance not because he mastered one field, but because he refused
If one Medici truly dominated Florence, it was Lorenzo the Magnificent — Cosimo’s grandson and the family’s most gifted operator. He became the embodiment of Renaissance Florence itself: brilliant, cultivated,
If there were a prize for the most unhinged, body-strewn, hell-obsessed fresco cycle of the Renaissance, the Chapel of San Brizio in Orvieto would be a prime contender. This is
Orsanmichele is a niche museum in Florence that’s basically a crash-course in Florentine civic identity and early Renaissance sculpture. It’s one of my favorite spots in the city. The statues are
Italy doesn’t really have an off season anymore. The shoulder months of May, September, and October are almost as crowded as summer. In fact the term “shoulder seasons” is really
The most dramatic sculpture in Florence isn’t tucked away in a museum. It’s out in the open, right in the heart of the city and you can see it for