Travel Italy Exploring Florence About Palazzo MediciRiccardi in Northern city centre
Travel Italy Exploring Florence About Palazzo MediciRiccardi in Northern city centre
On the northeastern edge of Piazza San Lorenzo stands the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi (Mon, Tues & Thurs-Sun 9am-7pm; €4.13), built by Michelozzo in the 1440s for Cosimo il Vecchio and for a century or more the principal seat of the Medici in the city. With its heavily rusticated exterior, this monolithic palace was the prototype for such houses as the Palazzo Pitti and Palazzo Strozzi, but was greatly altered in the seventeenth century by its new owners, the Riccardi family, who took over after Cosimo I moved out. Thanks to its restored Gozzoli frescoes - some of the most charming in all Florence - it now rates as a major sight. However, as only fifteen people are allowed to view these paintings at any one time, the queues can be overwhelming. You should visit the ticket office (through the palace courtyard to the rear) and book in advance for a timed visit the following day.
Of Michelozzo's original scheme, only the upstairs chapel remains intact, its interior covered by a brilliantly colourful narrative fresco of the Procession of the Magi , painted around 1460 by Benozzo Gozzoli. It shows the pageant of the Compagnia dei Magi, the most patrician of the city's religious confraternities, through a glowing, dream-like landscape dotted with castles; dogs and fabulous animals trot along beside. It's known that several of the Medici household are featured, but putting names to these prettified faces is a problem. The man leading the cavalcade on a white horse is certainly Piero il Gottoso, sponsor of the fresco. Lorenzo il Magnifico is probably the young king in the foreground, riding the grey horse seen in full profile, while his brother, Giuliano, is probably the one preceded by the black bowman. The artist himself is in the crowd on the far left, his red beret signed with his name in gold. A second staircase ascends from the courtyard to the Sala di Luca Giordano , a gilded and mirrored gallery notable for its Madonna and Child by Fra' Filippo Lippi, kept in a grotesque black metal box to the left of the door. Luca Giordano's overblown ceiling fresco of The Apotheosis of the Medici , painted after the Riccardi family had bought the building in 1659, is either deftly tongue-in-cheek or utterly shameless.
