The Salone dei Cinquecento
The republic's vast hall, stage of Leonardo and Michelangelo's unfinished duel.
Francesco Bini โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Eusebius โ CC BY 3.0 ยท Eusebius โ CC BY 3.0 ยท Gzen92 โ CC BY-SA 4.0
In 1504 Florence set history's two greatest face to face: Leonardo painting the Battle of Anghiari, Michelangelo the Battle of Cascina. Leonardo's experimental oil technique failed on the wall; Michelangelo was summoned to Rome โ both works vanished, surviving only in copies of their studies, studied to this day.
Gently, yes: a room may close for a civil wedding or a council session, and staff thread through the tourists. That is not a flaw but the point โ a palace never embalmed into a museum, still doing its job.
Ninety minutes for the halls, half an hour for tower plus queue. The costumed family tours ("at the Medici court") are excellent for children โ book at the museum desk.
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The Palazzo Vecchio is Florentine power in stone: a crenellated square fortress with its slender off-centre tower guarding Piazza della Signoria for seven centuries โ and still Florence's working city hall, the city governed from the same building since the Middle Ages. Inside is the vast Salone dei Cinquecento, scene of art's strangest duel: Leonardo and Michelangelo were commissioned to paint facing walls โ neither finished, Vasari's huge frescoes now cover the hall, and the words "seek and you shall find" on one keep hunters of the lost Leonardo busy to this day. Above lie the decorated Medici apartments; beneath the building, a Roman theatre's remains; and the 223-step climb of the Arnolfo tower gives the best close view of the Duomo there is.
The republic's vast hall, stage of Leonardo and Michelangelo's unfinished duel.
223 steps to the great close-range Duomo view.
Rooms ornamented floor to ceiling for the family that ruled Europe by money.
The cryptic words on Vasari's fresco โ the lost Leonardo perhaps beneath.
Piazza della Signoria, 50122 Florence