Palazzo Vecchio holds a very famous story within its walls. During the first years of the 16th century two great artists – Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo – are at work in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, today known as the Salone dei Cinquecento or Hall of the Five Hundred. The two rivaling artists are asked to celebrate two important Florentine military successes: Michelangelo will paint the battle of Cascina, and Leonardo the battle of Anghiari.

We don\'t know what stage Leonardo’s painting was in at the time, nor whether Giorgio Vasari – involved in renovating the room fifty years later – preserved what was left of it. But Michelangelo’s preparatory draft and the incomplete work by Leonardo were definitely to become a reference model for all artists in the following years. Benvenuto Cellini writes “as they worked one next to the other, they were the school of the world.”