Palazzo Davanzati

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Palazzo Davanzati was built in the 1300s by the Florentine family of the Davizzis, merchants and bankers of the time. After the centuries-long ownership of the Davanzati family, it was restored and refurbished in the XX century, bearing witness to the domestic life and to the comforts of the wealthy families of the past, into a stunning one-of-a-kind example of a medieval house in Florence.

Palazzo Davanzati is a rare example of a fourteenth-century Florentine residence, showing the architectural transition between the medieval tower house and the Renaissance palace. Inside, it is still possible to admire rooms decorated with murals dating back to the Middle Ages, such as the Hall of Parrots, the Chamber of Peacocks or that of the Chatelaine of Vergy, whose walls depict a dramatic love story from a 13th-century French chivalric poem.

Built by the powerful Davizzi family of merchants and bankers and later home to the Davanzati family, the palace suffered many changes over the centuries. Saved from the threat of demolition thanks to the Association for the Defense of Ancient Florence, in 1904 it was purchased and restored by Elia Volpi who made it the showcase of his antiquarian activity, becoming internationally famous as the “Museum of the Ancient Florentine House”. Purchased by the State in 1951, it was opened to the public with a display of objects from the collections of the Florentine Galleries, to which donations of maiolicas, furnishings, lace and embroidery were added over time.

The Museum preserves exceptional pieces such as the Guicciardini Blanket, a rare textile made in Sicily in the second half of the 1300s with quilted embroideries depicting scenes from the medieval epic story of Tristan and Isolde. Also not to be missed are the panel paintings by Giovanni di ser Giovanni known as Lo Scheggia and of the Master of Serumido – made as domestic decorations – and the Sienese armoire painted in grotesques.