Florence On Line : Museums

Museums

While Florence contains some of the world's most famous museums, including the Uffizi Gallery, it also has many other smaller but amazing collections that are well worth seeking out. Browse the entries below for more information about Florence's museums - and don't forget that some of the most amazing works of art in Florence are in her churches.

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Below are some of our most recent entries posted in the Museums category - use the links at the end of the page to access all the articles individually.

Museo Novecento

The Novecento (Twentieth Century) Museum is dedicated to Italian art of the 20th Century and offers a selection of around 300 works, which are located in 15 exhibition areas, in addition to a study room, a cabinet of drawings and prints, and a room for conferences and projections. The museum is located in the ancient Spedale of the Leopoldine in Piazza Santa Maria Novella.

Opening Hours
Summer hours (April 1 to September 30)
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 10:00 to 21:00
Thursday 10:00 to 14:00
Friday 10:00 to 23:00
Saturday - Sunday 10:00 to 21:00

Winter hours (October 1 to March 31)
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 10:00 to 18:00
Thursday 10:00 to 14:00
Friday 10:00 to 21:00
Saturday - Sunday 10:00 to 20:00

Cost of ticket:
Museum: € 8.50 (reduced: € 4 for 18-25 years and> 65 years and college students, free for under 18 years of age and groups of students and their teachers, tour guides and interpreters, people with disabilities and their carers, ICOM members, ICOMOS and ICCROM)

Temporary exhibitions:
€ 4 (reduced: € 2 for 18-25 years and> 65 years and college students, free for under 18 years of age and groups of students and their teachers, tour guides and interpreters, people with disabilities and their carers, members of ICOM, ICOMOS and ICCROM)

Cumulative museum and exhibition: € 10 (concessions € 6)
Annual subscription: € 10
Visits and activities: € 5

Vasari Corridor Reservations

This information was updated on March 2, 2014

New dates for visiting the Vasari Corridor have been announced - it is now scheduled to be open from February 7th to April 30th, 2014, but of course if you visit the official page tickets are not available!

There are currently two ways to see the Corridor - do it yourself as described here, most likely with an Italian speaking guide (except on Fridays as mentioned in the comments below), or booking with a tour company. The first option is cheaper - but will take some diligence in calling Italy, the second is more expensive, but much easier.

The official website of the "Corridoio Vasariano" is here: http://www.uffizi.firenze.it/en/musei/index.php?m=vasariano.

If you want to try to make a reservation, call immediately - the Italian country code is 39, and the number to call is 055 294883. The best part - tickets are only €10.50 plus a €4 reservation fee.

Since we are Friends of the Uffizi (I will post about this soon) our entrance is actually free, and we will only have to pay the 4 euro reservation fee on the day we visit. Good luck!

Alternatively, if the tour sells out, or you can not get through, there is a tour company (one of many actually) selling guided tours in English. This is a more expensive option, but it may be your last and best chance to see the corridor for years if it closes for renovations (as planned - but not done yet for a lack of funding).

Stibbert Museum

The museum was founded by Frederick Stibbert (1836 - 1906), who was born into a huge inheritance from his grandfather and did not work for the rest of his life. Instead of working, Frederick Stibbert dedicated his life to collecting various objects, antiques, and artifacts and turned his villa into a museum. When the size of the collections outgrew the villa, Stibbert hired architect Giuseppe Poggi, painter Gaetano Bianchi and sculptor Passaglia to add on rooms. In 1906, when Stibbert died, his collection was given to the city of Florence and was opened to the public.

The villa has 57 rooms that exhibit all of Stibbert's collections from around the world. Most of the walls are covered in leather and tapestries and the rooms are crowded with artifacts. Paintings are displayed throughout every room, including still lifes and portraits. There is also valuable furniture, porcelains, Tuscan crucifixes, Etruscan artifacts, and an outfit worn by Napoleon I of France. It also contains around 12,000 pieces of European, Oriental, Islamic, Japanese arms and armour from the 15th century through the 19th century. The Cavalcade room is a grand hall filled with 14th-16th century knights on horseback and 14 foot soldiers dressed in armour and holding weapons. The collection of Samurai armour contains over 80 suits and hundreds of swords.

The museum is open Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 10-14, and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10-18. Closed on Thursday.

Stibbert Museum
via Frederick Stibbert 26
50134 Florence
+39 055 475520
www.museostibbert.it
[email protected]

Casa Buonarroti

This museum was a property owned by Michelangelo. The house was converted into a museum dedicated to the artist by his great nephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. Its collections include two of Michelangelo's earliest sculptures, the Madonna of the Steps and the Battle of the Centaurs. The museum also houses paintings, sculptures, majolicas and archaeological sections.

The museum is open everyday except Tuesday from 9:30-14.

Casa Buonarroti
Via Ghibellina 70
50122 Florence, Italy
+39 055-241752
www.casabuonarroti.it
[email protected]

Orsanmichele

Orsanmichele is one of the most unique buildings in Florence and a great source of Florentine civic pride. It is famously known for the sculptures of saints placed in the niches or tabernacles on all four sides of the church by the various guilds of Florence. Executed between 1340 and 1602, together they form a timeline of gothic and renaissance art that is perhaps unrivaled in one location. The first sculpture, of St. Stephen by Andrea Pisano, was executed in 1340 - 150 years before Columbus discovered America - the last, St. Luke by Giambologna - was completed over 260 years later.

The Orsanmichele Museum is currently open on Mondays only from 10 AM to 5 PM.

Orsanmichele
Via Arte della Lana 1
Florence, Italy
+39 055-284-944
www.orsanmichele.net

Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore

The Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore is a lay institution founded by the Republic of Florence in 1296 to superintend the construction of the new Cathedral and the Campanile. As of 1436, the year in which Brunelleschi's dome was completed and the church was consecrated, the principal task of the Opera became that of conserving the monumental complex which was joined in 1777 by the Baptistry of San Giovanni and in 1891 by the Museum (Museo dell'Opera del Duomo - photo below) founded to house the works of art which, in the course of centuries, had been removed from the Duomo and the Baptistry. The museum is in Piazza Duomo, behind the dome.

The collection boasts masterpieces that range from the 14th to the end of the 16th centuries, and is characterized by the fact it is forced to expand continually as the result of the impossibility of conserving many other monuments in the open air where they are exposed to atmospheric pollution. The most famous work of art in the Museum is Michelangelo's PietÃ which he had sculpted for his own tomb.

The museum is open Monday to Friday from 8-19 and on Saturday from 8-2.

Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore
via della Canonica, 1
50122 Florence, Italy
+39 055 2302885
www.operaduomo.firenze.it
[email protected]

Casa Martelli Museum

The Museum Casa Martelli is an interesting example of an 18th-century nobleman's home and of the family's tastes in collecting.

In 1738 Niccolò and Giuseppe Maria Martelli employed the architect Bernardo Ciurini to transform several houses into the present palace. The interior was decorated in the taste of the period with paintings by Vincenzo Meucci, Bernardo Minozzi and Niccolò Conestabile, and stucco ornamentation by Giovan Martino Portogalli. The fine collection of art works belonging to the family was arranged in a specially designed suite of rooms. This is the last example of an 18th-century Florentine collection, with the exception of the Corsini collection, that has been preserved intact.

The paintings include works by Piero di Cosimo, Beccafumi, Salvator Rosa, Luca Giordano and Netherlandish painting of the 17th century.

The Museum is open for guided tours on Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings only, and you must have a reservation (€3 - but the "ticket" is free), made by calling 055 294883. You can not walk up and enter without a prior reservation. Via Zannetti is a small side street less than five minutes from the Duomo area.

Casa Martelli Museum
Via Ferdinando Zannetti, 8
50123 Florence, Italy
+39 055 294883
www.polomuseale.firenze.it/english/musei/casamartelli

Museo Galileo

Update: This museum has been renamed (and reopened after a major renovation) as the Museo Galileo on June 11, 2010.

The (former) Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence is one of the foremost international institutions in the history of science. Founded in 1927, the Museum is heir to a five century-long tradition of scientific collecting, which has its origins in the central importance assigned to scientists and scientific instruments by the Medici and Lorraine families.

The Institute has been continuously involved in research into topics connected with the history of science and technology as well as the history of scientific instruments, collections and museums.

Museo Galileo
Piazza dei Giudici, 1
50122 Florence, Italy
+39 055 265 311
Official website: http://www.museogalileo.it

Bardini Museum

Stefano Bardini, an art dealer known for his flair for Renaissance art and his love of blue painted walls, donated his life's labor and the building he housed it all in to the city of Florence in 1922.

The museum houses some of the most unique Renaissance art in Europe. Highlights of the collection include Roman sarcophagi, delicate wooden sculptures, and works attributed to Donatello and Pisano. Newer acquisitions now grace the halls as well as many others thought to be from between the 12th and 15th centuries. All are presented in a unique setting where columns, altars, and even stairs from original Romanesque and Renaissance-era buildings lend the museum's spaces an authentic, ethereal feel.

The museum is open from Saturday to Monday from 11-17.

Bardini Museum
Via dei Renai, 37 (Ponte alle Grazie)
Florence, Italy 5100
+39 055 2342427
www.rinascimentomoderno.it/museobardini

Horne Museum

The Horne Museum takes its name from the English collector Herbert P. Horne (1864-1916) who left his palace and his collections of a lifetime to the Italian State.

This palace had belonged to the Albertis and then the Corsis who gave it its present appearance at the end of the fifteenth century. With its balanced and elegant exterior and its restrained courtyard.

The museum reflects its owner's taste in layout; Horne was a man of letters, an architect and a critic of some standing who came to Florence at the end of the last century to study the Italian Renaissance. He particularly favored works of art, furniture, ornamental and useful household objects, the contents in fact of the type of Florentine home which he wished to recreate for himself. The result was a large and rich collection, which has been recently rearranged after the damage of the flood of 1966 and which preserves the character of an inhabited home. The most precious piece is the painting representing "St. Stephen" by Giotto. The sculptures include works by Desiderio da Settignano, Giambologna and the "Angels in Glory" by Bernini.

The museum is open from 9-13 from Monday to Saturday.

Horne Museum
via dei Benci, 6
Florence, Italy 50122
+39 055244661
www.museohorne.it
[email protected]