PALAZZO DAVANZATI: HOW LIFE WAS IN THE RENAISSANCE

     Explore this palace and get a sense of what life was in the Renaissance

Palazzo Davanzati - Florence, Italy

Via Porta Rossa
Open from 8.15 to 13.30
Cost €2, €1 with discount

The Palazzo Davanzati was commisioned in the mid XIV century by the Davizi family, who were memebers of the wool guild. The Davizi had to sell the palace due to financial difficulties, and the building changed hands twice before of being the Davanzati Palace (from the name of the owners Davanzati), who had it until 1838.

In year 1904 Elia Volpi bought the palace, who restored it and opened it as a museum in 1910. Volpi used it as an antique showroom and the objects were for sale. The museum was closed in year 1995 because the palace was falling down. After 10 years of renovation it is open again.

Palazzo Davanzati - Florence, Italy

The facade seems like a medieval tower house, and the groundfloor loggia was added in the XVI cenntury. Before it was an open space for commercial use. Typical Florentine spaces related to its merchant power.

                                

Loggia Palazzo Davanzati

             

Through the loggia you can reach the courtyard and the stone stairs bringing to the first floor. only the first floor has stone stairs, the other floors have wooden stairs.

                                                              

Stairs of Palzzo Davanzati

On the first floor the big room was for business affairs. In correspondence with the three openings of the loggia below are three holes in the ground that can be revealed by opening up trap doors. These permitted the owner to check who was coming in, and in case of undesireables, drop heavy things on their heads.

Then there is the room of the parrots, which is set up like a dining room, and has a large fireplace. The much-restored frescoes on the wall (at this point more rightly called wall paintings than true frescoes) have a pattern of diamonds and parrots after which the room is named.

The room of the parrot

A very small room in between this one and the next was a bathroom, with a potty hole. Florentines reinvented indoor personal hygeine, which was known to the Ancients but lost in the middle ages

Bathroom in the Palazzo Davanzati

Next to this bathroom was the study, or studiolo. Its wall paintings are now lost, but it is suggestively set up with objects that one might find in the man of the house’s room used for storage of business and recreational items. On display are a forziere (safe or strongbox), a cassone covered with velvet (more rightly found in a bedroom), some chairs, some small bronze statuettes, and some paintings with mythological scenes.