Florence's town hall may hide a lost Leonardo behind its walls
Florence's Palazzo Vecchio began in 1299 as a defensible seat for the city's magistrates, built over the razed homes of a rebel family. It has jailed Cosimo de' Medici and Savonarola, hosted Italy's provisional government, and may still conceal Leonardo's unfinished Battle of Anghiari behind a Vasari fresco, though searches so far are inconclusive.
Arnolfo di Cambio, who also designed the Duomo and Santa Croce, raised the palace on ground once owned by the Uberti. The chronicler Giovanni Villani called them Ghibelline rebels and said the point was to stop their houses ever returning. The result is a stone cube with Gothic windows and jutting battlements, some of whose openings let defenders drop hot liquids or rocks. Its 94 m tower sits off-centre because it rests on an older family tower nicknamed La Vacca, the Cow. Cells inside held Cosimo the Elder in 1435 and Savonarola in 1498. The one-handed clock of 1353 by Nicolò Bernardo gave way in 1667 to a copy by Georg Lederle of Augsburg.
The building changed names as its role changed. Duke Cosimo I moved in during May 1540, a sign of how secure Medici rule had become; when he later settled in Palazzo Pitti across the Arno, his former home became the Old Palace, linked to the new one by Vasari's raised corridor over the Ponte Vecchio. Florence served as Italy's temporary capital from 1865 to 1871, and the mayor has worked here since 1872. Michelangelo's David guarded the door from 1504 until 1873, and a 1910 replica now faces Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus, commissioned under the Medici as a rival statement.
Inside, Simone del Pollaiolo raised the Salone dei Cinquecento in 1494 to seat Savonarola's Grand Council of 500. It runs about 52 metres long, and the familiar boast that it is Italy's largest hall by volume fails against Padua's Palazzo della Ragione. Leonardo, hired in 1503, mixed wax into his paints and used braziers of hot coals when the work dried too slowly; Michelangelo never got past drawings for his wall before Rome called him away. Vasari's team decorated the room between 1555 and 1572, including 39 ceiling panels.
Off the hall hides the windowless studiolo of 1570–1575, crammed with paintings of the four elements and a Bronzino portrait of Cosimo and Eleonora of Toledo. Francesco de' Medici reportedly watched meetings through a peephole from it. Michelangelo's Genius of Victory went to the Bargello in 1868 and returned in 1921.
Source: Palazzo Vecchio
