Pitti Palace museums – Royal Apartments, Palatine Gallery and Fashion & Costumes

(This is part of our series of posts from our six-week Road Scholar Independent Living and Learning in Florence trip to Italy in Spring 2025. We have an index to all the posts from that trip here.)

Today, we returned to the Pitti Palace to visit three more of its museums: the Royal Apartments, the Palatine Gallery, and the Fashion & Costume Museum. The Royal Apartments required a special reservation for a timed tour.

The Royal Apartments occupy 14 rooms on the first floor (the floor above ground level) of the Pitti Palace. In the early 1700s, these were the private apartments of Grand Prince of Tuscany Ferdinando de’Medici, the Grand Dukes of Habsburg-Lorraine from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s, and the sovereigns of the Royal House of Savoy after 1865 during the short period in which Florence was the capital of Italy. This wall painting is in the first room, the Sala di Bona. The next several photos are from other rooms in the Royal Apartments.

Wall of the Sala di Bona:

The Red Hall:

The King’s Study Room:

The King’s Bedroom:

The Queen’s Drawing Room:

The Queen’s Bedroom:

The Oval Cabinet:

The Round Cabinet:

Madonna delle Rose by Botticelli, in the royal chapel within the apartments.

The Royal Chapel:

The Blue Drawing Room:

The Throne Room:

The Green Hall:

The royals’ view of Florence from the windows of the Green Hall:

From the Royal Apartments, we entered the adjacent Palatine Gallery, which houses in the ceremonial rooms about 500 masterpieces chosen from the main Medici collections. It is an impressive, almost overwhelming selection which includes the largest concentration of paintings by Raphael in the world, as well as invaluable works by Titian, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and Rubens.

This ceiling fresco in the Room of Venus was painted between 1640-1647 by Pietro da Cortona for Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando II de’ Medici.

The Sala dell’Arca (Room of the Ark). The paintings covering the entire walls and ceiling were done in 1816 by the Milanese artist Luigi Ademollo (1764-1849), one of the leading lights in neo-classical Italian art. The theme, depicted in a theatrical manner, is the Procession of David and the Jews on the return of the Ark of the Covenant. The visitor feels he is inside a large pavilion, looking out on a procession, like a frieze against a backdrop of classical architecture.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Three Graces (early 1600s), in the Palatine Gallery

Raphael, Portrait of Leo X with Cardinals Luigi de’ Rossi and Giulio de’ Medici (1483)

Ceiling of the Room of Apollo:

Raphael, Ritratto virile (c. 1505)

Another of the brilliant ceiling frescoes in the “planet rooms” painted between 1640-1647 by Pietro da Cortona.

Caravaggio, Amore Dormiente (late 1500s)

Napoleon’s Bathroom (built for, but never used by, him):

Galleria delle Statue:

The Boboli Gardens – the Medicis’ “backyard” behind the Pitti Palace:

The Museum of Costume and Fashion in the Pitti Palace explores the history of fashion, haute couture, and the evolution of taste and costume through the centuries. This is a wedding gown from the 1800s.

1950s gowns:

1960 evening dress

Suit by Valentino, 1966

Woman’s suit by Missoni, 1973. The House of Missoni won a Neiman Marcus award for fashion, which is equivalent to the Oscars in film.

Gucci evening dress, 1987

Selfie in courtyard of the Pitti Palace. Our feet were tired by this time!

This is on our street as it goes down the hill from our apartment. Our street, Costa di San Giorgio, is on the left, and comes out near the Pitti Palace. Costa dei Magnoli, the street on the right, descends through a tunnel and ends up about a block from the head of the Ponte Vecchio.

Front door of our apartment building at Costa di San Giorgio 24, to show the slope of the street.