Pitti Palace
Situated in the first great square in the area that the Florentines call "Diladdarno" - beyond the Arno - Palazzo Pitti dominates uncontested by a small hill at the feet of Boboli. Its construction was commissioned, in the second half of the 15th century, by the banker Luca Bonaccorso Pitti to Filippo Brunelleschi, but the project is presently ascribed to Luca Fancelli who created and began building the first palace outside the walls of the city. The palace has had a long history of works of construction and of extensions which have lasted about four centuries. The first version of Palazzo Pitti had smaller body dimensions compared to the present one. It consisted of two floors covered with rusticated stone ashlars. The architectural Renaissance style, austere and balanced, was enriched by classical elements from the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders. The following extensions gave the Palace its present appearance. Around 1550 the Grand-Duke Cosimo I de' Medici purchased it to become the residence of the family and in 1558 he commissioned the works of refinement to Bartolomeo Ammannati who included large windows in the faade, called inginocchiate, and created the porticoed courtyard. The construction and the creation of the great garden, named Boboli from the homonymous hill, were commissioned to Niccol Tribolo. In 1565 the Grand-Duke wanted the construction of a corridor for the family so they could walk to piazza della Signoria avoiding dangers of attacks. The project was commissioned to Vasari. In 1618 the works continued under the direction of Giulio da Parigi who extended the building with other two buildings with two floors. There were further adjustments in 1640 with Alfonso da Parigi whose direction gave the palace its present length. But what we can admire today is the result of the following changes brought on by the Lorena who completed the faade adding the two lateral "rond" which stretch the palace towards the square almost wanting to embrace it. It was the Grand-Duke Ferdinando II who had the halls of entertainment of the summertime residence decorated, on the ground floor, and of the winter residence at the first floor for his coming up wedding with Vittoria della Rovere. Artists of great fame were summoned such as Giovanni da Sangiovanni and Pietro da Cortona whose works contributed to render the palace an absolute royal palace. The last body part added to the building was the palazzina della Meridiana, in neo-classical style, commissioned at the end of the 18th century to Gaspare Maria Paoletti and Pasquale Poccianti by Pietro Leopoldo. Palazzo Pitti, which through time assumed different functions, is today the seat of important museums (Silvers, Chinawares, Costumes, Carriages, Modern Art Gallery, Garden of Boboli) through which it is possible to visit its halls, the displays of the court and the splendour of a faraway epoch which managed to pass down faithful and unchanged through history.

The Medici's Chapels
The Medici Chapels were built as a personal sepulchre of the Medici family right in the basilica of San Lorenzo, the one considered by the Medici as their private church and located in front of the residential palace in via Larga (presently via Cavour).
The cardinal Giulio de' Medici, the future Clemente VII, and Leone X, in 1520, involved Michelangelo Buonarroti in the project of the Sacrestia Nuova: or better of a chapel en pendant with the Sacrestia Vecchia by Filippo Brunelleschi, where distinguished members of the family would be buried. The works began in March 1520 and were definitely completed by Giorgio Vasari in 1546, after Michelangelo, in 1534, had left Florence directed to Rome.
The project provided that in the chapel would be placed the tombs of Lorenzo il Magnifico, of his brother Giuliano de' Medici, of Lorenzo the Duke of Urbino (Piero's son, the eldest son of Lorenzo) and of Giuliano the Duke of Nemours (the third son of the Magnifico): the two Magnifici and the two Capitani. Only the tombs of the Capitani were completed. On the left of the altar is the sepulchre of Lorenzo Duke of Urbino, whom, in the act of reflecting, was defined by Vasari as il Pensieroso (the thoughtful), and it is, thus, identified by the critics as the symbol of contemplative life: beneath him are, set over the volutes of the sepulchre, the symbolizations of il Crepuscolo (dusk), characterized in the face by the famous uncompleted typical of Michelangelo, and l'Aurora (dawn), of which the plastic force reveals the interest cultivated by the artist towards anatomical studies.
In front of it is the sepulchre of Giuliano, the symbol of active life, with the swagger-cane in his hand: and underneath it il Giorno (the Day), in a un motion of rebellion, and la Notte (the Night), inspirer on the other hand of very famous verses written by Michelangelo. In the Brunelleschi style architecture - because of the duotone of the grey stone with the white plaster - Tolnay interprets it as the subdivision of three spheres: the sphere of the Hades, the earthly one and at last the celestial sphere culminating with the cupola - inspired by the Pantheon's. While on the other hand the sepulchres would allude to the concept of the soul free from the earthly commitments and tending towards the contemplation of the divine life incarnated by the Virgin. This statue - created by Michelangelo in 1521 and placed above the sarcophagus of the two Magnifici - represents, in fact, the spiritual mainstay of the Chapel and is surrounded by the statues of the two patron saints of the Medici family: on the right Cosma, produced by Montorsoli (1537), and on the left Damiano, created by Raffaele da Montelupo (1531).

The Uffizi Palace
The Uffizi Palace is one of the most loved monuments of Florence. An architectural work of great importance, that shelters masterpieces of inestimable value.
Comissioned by Cosimo I, it was designed by Giorgio Vasari around the middle of the 16th century. In order to realize the project, Vasari had some of the buildings surrounding the area demolished.Among these the church of San Pier Scheraggio, in via della Ninna. The intention of Cosimo I was to build a palace that could host the thirteen administrative and judicial Magistrature or Uffizi, from which the palace will get its name.
When Vasari died, the construction of the Uffizi was handed over to Buontalenti and to Alfonso Parigi. Buontalenti projected the Teatro Mediceo according to the will of Francesco I, the son of Cosimo I, in 1586. When Florence was the capital of Italy the theatre was the seat of the Senate. The building has the unusual and singular horseshoe shape, also called U shape, which opens towards the Arno River. The two bodies of the building are parallel and conjoined by a connecting corridor that has six big arched windows that open over the courtyard of the palace and over the Arno River. The two floors of the building, divided by string courses, stand over a portico that runs along the whole length of the palace and is sustained by pillars. In the niches of the portico are the statues of the Florentines who distinguished themselves from the Middle Ages until the 19th century.
At the present day the Palazzo degli Uffizi hosts one of the most admired and visited museums in the world for the quality of its artworks and the history that accompanies them from the 13th century to the 18th century: the Uffizi Gallery. In 1993 the Palace was involved in the bombing attack at the Accademia dei Gergofili undergoing damages and loses of inestimable value; another act of vandalism against a patrimony of the world that managed to resist and to win returning, after a long restoration work, to its original splendour.

Santa Maria Novella
Piazza Santa Maria Novella, with its original five-sided shape, is one of the largest squares in the old city centre of Florence: it was in fact enlarged several times to be able to contain the crowds of people drawn there by the preaching of the Dominican monks, who had settled in this part of town in 1221 and built a convent. The size of the square was later to make it the obvious place to hold the Palio dei Cocchi or Chariot race, today only recorded by two marble obelisks set on top of two bronze turtles by Giambologna.
One side of the square is occupied by the Dominican Basilica and the area containing the convent, which also included the monks' ancient Pharmacy, while another is delimited by the long loggia of what was once the Hospital of San Paolo, built between 1489-96 as a copy of the Loggia degli Innocenti by Brunelleschi. A polychrome terracotta lunette by Andrea della Robbia, who also created the tondos placed between the arches, can be seen on the right underneath the portico. The lunette depicts a meeting between St. Francis and St. Dominic, which is said to have taken place here in 1221.

Florence Dome (Santa Maria del Fiore)
The Cathedral or Duomo of Florence as we see it today is the end result of years of work that covered over six centuries of history. Its basic architectural project was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio at the end of the 13th century; the cupola that has made it a symbol for the whole of Tuscany was created by that genius of the Renaissance, Filippo Brunelleschi, while the facade that completed it was carried out as late as the late 19th century. A whole series of structural and decorative interventions to both the exterior and the interior that were to enrich the history of the monument were carried out during this space of time: these range from the construction of the two sacristies to the 16th century marble flooring, and from the execution of the sculptures to the frescoes, signed by Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari (the Last Judgement in the cupola). The third and last Florence cathedral (the cathedral is always the church that is the seat of the bishopric), it was given the name of Santa Maria del Fiore (Holy Mary of the Flower) in 1412 in clear allusion to the lily symbol of the city. It was built on top of the second cathedral, which early Christian Florence had dedicated to Santa Reparata and which remained in activity for nine centuries, until orders were given to demolish it in 1375: considerable remains of this construction, which was slightly more than half the size of the present basilica and completed by two belltowers, can be seen today in the archeological area underneath the Cathedral.
In 1293, the Florence Republic, at the suggestion of the notary Ser Mino de Cantoribus, decided to replace Santa Reparata with a larger and more magnificent cathedral, and was also prepared to finance its construction: "so that the industry and power of man are unable to invent or ever attempt again anything that is larger or more beautiful". The population was expected to partecipate in the costs: all last wills and testaments bore a tax which was then put towards the "Building" of the Cathedral. The project was assigned to Arnolfo di Cambio in 1294, and he ceremoniously laid the first stone on September 8th 1296. The brilliant head architect of the City Council was already revolutionizing the Franciscan basilica of Santa Croce and in 1298 also started work on the construction of Palazzo Vecchio. Arnolfo worked on the Cathedral from 1296 to 1302, the year of his death, and although the dominating style of the period was Gothic, he conceived a basilica of classical grandeur, with three wide naves that meet in the vast chancel where the high altar stands, surrounded in its turn by the "trefoil" shaped tribune (a schematic representation of the petals of a flower?) on which the cupola rests. The planned diameter for this dome was 45,50 metres, just like that of the Baptistery. Thus Arnolfo spent the last few years of his life completing two bays and the new facade, which he only had time to decorate and complete by half: the sculptures (some by Arnolfo himself) were dismantled and transferred to the Museum of the Opera del Duomo when Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici decided to construct the new facade in 1586.
On the death of the architect, the work on the building ground to a halt. New impulse was however given to its construction when the body of St. Zanobius was discovered in 1330 in Santa Reparata. Giotto was nominated overseer for the building site in 1334 but, apart from the fact that he did not have much longer to live (he died in 1337), he concentrated most of his remaining energy on building his Belltower. Giotto was succeeded by Andrea Pisano (author of the South Doors of the Baptistery), until 1348, the year of the terrible plague that decimated the population, reducing it from 90.000 to 45.000.
In fact the fresco of 1342 in the Museum of the Bigallo shows us the building at this particular stage. Under Francesco Talenti, overseer from 1349-59, the Belltower was completed and a new project prepared for the Duomo, with the collaboration (1360-69) of Giovanni di Lapo Ghini: the centre nave was divided into four square bays (thus including fewer windows than in Arnolfo's design), with two rectangular lateral bays. The construction was already well advanced by about 1370 and so was the new project for the apse, surrounded by tribunes that amplified Arnolfo's "trefoil". Santa Reparata was pulled down in 1375: a sign that Santa Maria del Fiore was now ready to be the new cathedral of Florence.

Piazza della Signoria
Piazza della Signoria has been the political heart of the city from the Middle Ages to the present day. It is a singular urbanistic creation that began taking shape from 1268 onwards, when the Guelph party gained control of the city again and decided to raze the houses of their Ghibelline rivals to the ground. The first to be destroyed were the towers belonging to the Foraboschi and the Uberti families, in spite of the fact that the head of the family (the famous Farinata celebrated by Dante in his "Comedy"), had defended the city from destruction after its army had been disastrously defeated at the battle of Montaperti (September 4th 1260) by the Ghibelline coalition led by Siena. In the end 36 houses were demolished which explains the unusual "L" shape of the square and why the buildings around it are unaligned, all that remained after the city's enemies had all been "wiped out" (nothing was ever to be built on the site again).
Its gets its name of course from the most important monument there, Palazzo della Signoria, designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1298-99 (much of it already completed by 1302, only three years later) for the seat of the Republican government and which was later to host the Gonfalonier of Justice and the Priors of the Arts (it was in fact at first called Palazzo dei Priori). The palace continued to maintain this politically representative function in the city during the reign of the Medici and later under Duke Cosimo I, who lived here between 1540 and 1565, commissioning his court architect, Giorgio Vasari, to double the building in size. When the Grand Duke and his family moved to the new palace of Pitti in 1565, Palazzo della Signoria began to be known as Palazzo Vecchio (the Old Palace). The square however is not just the "civil" centre of Florence, it is also a splendid open-air museum. The square of the Uffizi stretches out on the south side, towards the Arno, with the eye-catching Loggia dei Lanzi, (1376-1382), whose late Gothic roof covers 15 statues which also include Benvenuto Cellini's wonderful Perseus holding up the head of the Medusa. The statues in the square deserve a chapter all to themselves. Apart from the great sculptures lined up in front of the facade of Palazzo Vecchio (among them the copy of David by Michelangelo), we can hardly avoid noticing the Fountain of Neptune by Ammannati and the equestrian statue of Cosimo I d Medici by Giambologna. Nearby, a round marble plaque on the ground marks the exact site where Fra Girolamo Savonarola was burned at the stake on May 23rd 1498.
The square is bordered by a series of houses that date from the 14th-16th centuries, among them the Tribunal of the Mercanzia (1359, an ancient court of justice that dealt in commercial matters), and 16th century Palazzo Uguccioni, whose facade is thought to have been designed by Raphael. The palace containing the Alberto Della Ragione Collection, which the Genoan collector donated to the City Council (1970), stands at number 5. Its 21 rooms contain 250 Italian paintings from the period between 1910-1950. The huge palace of the Assicurazioni Generali, built in Renaissance style in 1871, stands on the sites of the ancient Loggia of the Pisans and the church of Santa Cecilia.
Substantial remains of many of the buildings that stood here in antiquity were discovered when the square was repaved in 1980. This gave the Board of Architectural Assets the chance to study the remains of houses and the various stratifications in detail; the area was confirmed as being the site of the first human settlement, that grew up by the ford across the Arno, while the Neolithic remains that were discovered dated from long before the foundation of the Roman city. Moreover a great many remains of Roman Florence were found underneath the mediaeval houses, including some thermal baths and a workshop for the dying of cloth. The presence of this type of production shows that, long before the enormous development in the 12th-13th centuries that brought so much wealth to the "city of the Flower" and allowed it to finance all its artistic masterpieces, this activity was already playing an extremely important part in the history and economy of the city.

Ponte Vecchio
Built in ancient times by the Etruscans, the bridge has weathered many storms - and storming by invading legions. Because of its location over the narrowest part of the Arno River, the bridge has been rebuilt and restored many times throughout its long history. And it has changed with the times.
Originally the bridge was built to allow access over the Arno. Slowly, with so much traffic going over it, a few enterprising parties decided to set up shop on the bridge itself. As that early traffic consisted primarily of traveling soldiers, it isn't surprising that the first merchants to set up shop were blacksmiths, butchers, and tanners.
During the Middle Ages, Florence was hit hard by the Plague. Half of Florence was wiped out the by the Black Death, and the remaining populace became suspicious of their old ways of living.
It was also around this time that the powerful Medici family moved into Florence. They brought with them vast wealth and an appreciation for the finer things in life. Seeing those older merchants using the Arno River as their own personal sewer system didn't exactly fit in with their ideas for the beautification of Florence. Soon the blacksmiths, butchers, and tanners were replaced with goldsmiths and artists, and the number of shops increased tremendously. Between 1565 and 1800, an upper level was added, as was a back row of shops. All this increased trade not only helped Florence grow, but the new shops also gave the bridge structure and strength.
The Ponte Vecchio is the only of Florence's bridges to have survived WWII, and in 1966, when a massive flood wiped out the shops on the bridge, the bridge itself was strong enough to withstand the roaring waters.
The Ponte Vecchio embodies the progress of humanity because it has come from carrying soldiers to battle, to open commerce, to a vast gathering place for peoples from all walks of life.

Palazzo Vecchio
Palazzo Vecchio, found in Piazza della Signoria in the historical center of Florence, which once had the exclusive role of political representative of the city, began to lose importance beginning with the new construction of the Uffizi Palace in 1565.
The Palace went through three building stages from the time of its original construction. Arnolfo Di Cambio, who began the project in 1299, was the creator of the original plan, but shortly after beginning the project he died and left the project o be completed by his successors who finished it in 1314.
Built on the ruins of two other palaces, the original ancient tower found on these ruins, was incorporated into the new facade by Arnolfo Di Cambio. It is 94 meters in height and contains two small holding cells which once held prisoner Cosimo the Elder in 1435 and Girolamo Savonarla later in 1498.
The first large alterations were done during the Republican era and again after Cosimo I of the Medici took residence there in the mid 1500's. Centuries later it gained importance again after the powerful Lorraine family was expelled from the city in 1848 and Florence was the capital of the kingdom of Italy.
It was shortly after that Palazzo Vecchio became the seat of United Italy's provisional government from 1865-71 and housed the Chamber of Deputies. It later returned to its original function as the seat of the City Council in 1872.
The Palazzo Vecchio that we see today house offices of the City Council but much of it can be visited today.
The first floor is composed of 3 courtyards, Salone dei Cinquecento, and the Studiolo.
The second floor contains the Apartments of the Elements, Terrace of Saturn, The Hercules Room, the room of Jupiter, the Room of Cybele, The Ceres Rom, the Sala Verde, The Room of the Sabines, the Dining Room, the Room of Penelope, the Private Chambers of Eleanor, the Sala dell'Udienza, the Chapel of the Signoria, the Sala dell'orologio, the Stanza del Guardarobe, the Old Chancellery, and the Study.