Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens Combo

Important: Please note that you will have to exchange your voucher for your ticket at the Pitti Palace before you visit the Palace or the Gardens. You can then choose to visit the Gardens before or after the Pitti Palace, but your visit to the Palace must be at the fixed entrance time on the voucher. Once you have exhanged your voucher, you will have to ensure that you retain the ticket in order to enter all of the attractions.

The Pitti Palace

The Palatine gallery is, in essence, a private Medici (and their successors') collection, and is today displayed as such - hung according to taste, not chronology, with approximately 500 largely Renaissance paintings by such masters as Raphael, Titian, Correggio and Rubens.

The Modern Art Gallery is perhaps not ideally named - no amorphous sculptures, no 'installations', no shock-of-the-new here. This is because, in Italian, 'modern art' dates from prior to the 2nd World War - what comes after tends to be called 'contemporary'. What there is is a good collection of pieces dating from 1700 to early 1900; of particular note are works by members of the Macchiaioli movement, a school of pioneering 19th-century Tuscan painters, prime movers in the impressionist movement.

The Silver Museum is located inside the Pitti Palace and is home to a splendid collection of well, silver, as well as cameo work and pieces of work in semi-precious stones. The Costume Gallery is located in the wing of the palace known as the Palazzina della Meridiana, and is home to a collection of theatrical costumes dating from the 16th century up to the present day. Also on show is a collection of Italian garments spanning the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Closed for restoration: The Royal and Imperial Apartments, the Costume Gallery, and the Tesoro die Granduchi are currently not acessible to the public due to restoration work.

The Boboli and Bardini Gardens

The Boboli and Bardini gardens are very much worth a visit, if only for the splendid views they offer across the city of Florence, and for the chance of some cool shade during the summer heat! They range up the Boboli hill from the rear of the Pitti Palace, and are a fine example of formal Italian gardens, dotted here and there with a wide range of sculptures and Roman antiquities. The Pitti Palace is but a short walk from the centre of Florence and is often reached by strolling across the noted Ponte Vechhio bridge.

The gardens are also home to small and large fountains and grottos, as well as the much-photographed and postcard-reproduced statue Bacchino, a satiric representation of a court dwarf as Bacchus.