Palazzo Martelli, historic building and museum in Florence, Italy
Palazzo Martelli is a town palace in the heart of Florence, now open as a national museum that preserves original furnishings, paintings, and decorations across several floors. The rooms include a yellow hall, a red hall, a chapel, a dance hall, and other spaces that together show how the family lived over the centuries.
The palace was first built in the 1520s and grew considerably in 1627, when Marco Martelli married his cousin and several adjoining buildings were merged into one. A later renovation in 1738 gave the building much of the form it holds today.
Works by painters such as Piero di Cosimo, Domenico Beccafumi, Salvator Rosa, and Luca Giordano hang among original furniture and tapestries throughout the rooms. The arrangement gives the feeling that art was part of daily life here, not simply decoration added for show.
The entrance is on Via Ferdinando Zannetti, and the building is set up to welcome visitors with mobility needs. Taking time to move through the upper floors gives a clearer sense of how the rooms and their contents relate to one another.
On the ground floor, Niccolò Connestabile painted a frescoed pergola that uses perspective to make the room appear larger than it really is. This kind of painted architecture was not common in Florentine town residences, which makes this part of the building feel quite different from the floors above.
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