Palazzo dello Strozzino, Renaissance palace in central Florence, Italy
The Palazzo dello Strozzino is a Renaissance palace on Piazza degli Strozzi in central Florence, with a facade of rusticated stone and three doorways at street level. The building has several floors organized around an internal courtyard designed by Michelozzo.
The palace was commissioned in the mid-1400s by a branch of the Strozzi family, after Palla Strozzi passed the property to his cousins in 1457. Over the following centuries the building changed hands and uses, until part of it was converted into a cinema in the 20th century.
The Cinema Odeon occupies part of the ground floor and still shows films today in a hall decorated in a 1920s style. Sitting inside, visitors can look up at ornate ceilings that feel completely out of place in a Renaissance building, which makes the experience oddly memorable.
The palace sits directly on Piazza degli Strozzi, a short walk from Piazza della Repubblica, and is easy to reach on foot from most of the city center. The interior can be visited through the Cinema Odeon, since the rest of the building is not open to the public.
The courtyard originally had a portico with columns, which was later removed to make space for the cinema. So part of the original Renaissance structure disappeared behind the walls of a 20th-century movie house.
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