Lesser but hardly pittiable

It’s unfair to talk of quantity or quality in Florence, but none-the-less the Uffizi remains the star relative to the Pitti palace. The Pitti was the home the Medici and is ridiculously grand in the Florentine palace style that became the model for banks and with lavish interior decoration. You can only wonder what it would have been to live in such a place (you could ask QE2 right now) but then you’d have plenty of servants to help. Ultimately, the queen still goes to the loo (I know it’s true because during construction I saw the loo built for her in our Parliament House) and people are always interested in such things (think Space Station). The example offered at the Pitti is Napoleon’s bathroom from when he was in cahrge. It’s nestled amongst massed paintings on the second floor with walls covered floor to high ceiling with Raphaels and Botticelli and Tiziani and more. There are some masterpieces here, but walking through is not quite the breathtaking experience of the Uffizi. Thus fewer queues, too. The paintings form the Palatine collection; there are several other collections. The Museo degli Argenti (Medici Treasury) and the Porcelain collection are grouped together with a stunning collection of religious works and reliquaries and indulgent household items and some oddities that are amusing in their excess. There’s some modern jewellery, too, still being donated to the museum (perhaps for tax purposes as happens in Australia). There’s a costume museum that is all modern other than for three pieces retrieved from graves of three Medici. They are not in great condition but interestingly they display cuts and how they were made. There’s a Gallery of Modern Art that hardly reaches the C20th. And the Boboli Gardens, a garden in the grand European tradition of private gardens for the wealthy. Some pics.