Pitti Palace
Situated at the foot of the Boboli hill in the piazza called "Diladdarno", it was constructed by Brunelleschi by the wishes of Luca Bonaccorso, in the second half of 1400.
The first construction of the Palace was much smaller than that which was ordered, having only 2 covered floors with stone ashlars. In the course of the centuries which followed, various modifications were made to achieve what the Palace is today. In 1550 Cosimo of the Medici's purchased it as a family residence and commissioned Bartholomew Ammannati to design the porticoed courtyard and the large windows referred to as kneeling. The gardens called Boboli gardens, which get their name from the same hill, were done by a project given to Niccolò Tribolo. In 1565, Vasari designed an elevated corridor in order to arrive in the Piazza of the Signoria. In 1618 work continued with Giulio of Paris and the building was elongated with an additional two bodies on two floors. It was then that the Grand Duke Ferdinand II called in artists like Giovanni da Sangiovanno and Pietro da Cortona to render the Palace a real palace for the occasion of his wedding to Vittoria della Rovere.
It was in 1700 that the realization of the last addition to Palazzo Pitti was made. Pietro Leopoldo, in fact, commissioned Gaspare Maria Paoletti and Pasquale Pocciani to design the little palace of Meridiana in neo-classic style. Today, Palazzo Pitti houses many important museums (Silver, Porcelain, Costume, Carriage, and the Boboli Gardens) through which one can recapture the magnificence and splendor of an époque from long ago.