Giardino di San Marco, Renaissance garden in Florence, Italy
Giardino di San Marco is a former Renaissance garden in central Florence, once stretching between Via Cavour and Via San Gallo. The site today is occupied by a court building and retains little of its original open-air layout.
In 1475, Lorenzo de Medici acquired the land from the monks of San Marco and turned it into an art school filled with ancient sculptures. In the 19th century the site was rebuilt and became home to the court that still occupies it today.
The garden once served as a place where young artists studied and copied ancient sculptures from the Medici collection. Today, little remains to remind visitors of that past, as the building now functions as a court of law.
The site sits in central Florence and is easy to reach on foot from nearby churches and museums. Because the building is an active court, public access is not permitted and there is nothing to visit from inside.
Michelangelo is said to have trained here as a young man, working alongside sculptures that Lorenzo de Medici had gathered from across the ancient world. The garden was in this way a kind of early stopping point for artists who went on to shape European art.
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