Palazzo Pitti: The Palace That Outlived Everyone

Luca Pitti wanted a palace larger than the Medici's. He got it. Then lost everything — including the palace.

In 1458, one of Florence's most powerful bankers commissioned a residence on the other side of the Arno designed to dwarf anything the Medici had ever built. He died before it was finished. His family fell. And in 1549, the palace built to surpass the Medici was purchased by Eleonora de Toledo — wife of Cosimo I de' Medici.

What followed were five centuries of accumulation. The Medici expanded it into one of the most sumptuous residences in Europe. The Habsburg-Lorraine kept collecting after them. The kings of unified Italy moved in after that. Each left a layer. Today the Palazzo Pitti houses several museums within its walls — including a gallery where the paintings still hang exactly as the Medici placed them, floor to ceiling, without the chronological logic of modern museums. Not a museum's interpretation of the Medici. The Medici's own interpretation of themselves.

This is the story of the palace that began as an act of rivalry and ended up belonging to everyone.

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Florence: The City That Changed the World is a series about the city that invented the Renaissance, financed Europe, and left a legacy still present in everything you see, think, and use every day.

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