Palazzo Pitti - Galleria Palatina

Palazzo Pitti was begun around 1458 for the Florentine banker Luca Pitti and was acquired by the Medici family in 1549, after which it became the principal residence of the Medici grand dukes and, later, of the Houses of Lorraine and Savoy. The Galleria Palatina occupies the palace's state apartments on the piano nobile and preserves its Baroque-era hang, with paintings stacked frame to frame across gilded and frescoed rooms much as they appeared under 17th- and 18th-century Medici and Lorraine ownership, rather than in the chronological, single-row arrangement typical of modern museums. The collection is especially strong in High Renaissance and Baroque painting, with the largest holdings of Raphael outside the Vatican, including his Madonna della Seggiola and portraits of the Medici, alongside major works by Titian, such as the Concert and Portrait of a Lady (La Bella), and paintings by Rubens, Andrea del Sarto, and Caravaggio. Rooms are named for their ceiling frescoes depicting planetary gods, painted by Pietro da Cortona in the mid-17th century to celebrate the education and virtues of Medici princes. The Palatine ticket also grants access to the adjoining Royal Apartments and the Modern Art Gallery, tracing Tuscan and Italian painting from the Napoleonic era through the early 20th century. Behind the palace, the Boboli Gardens extend the Medici residence into a formal Renaissance garden with grottoes, fountains, and an amphitheater, though the gardens require a separate consideration when planning visit length. The palace's grand scale and continuous royal occupation into the 20th century, when it passed to the Italian state, give the interiors a lived-in, dynastic character distinct from the more purely curatorial Uffizi.