Housed in the seventeenth-century wing of Palazzo Pitti, known as the Palazzina della Meridiana, the Costume Gallery is accessible from the palace or from the Boboli Gardens.

Founded in 1983 as a result of major acquisitions and public and private donations, today it boasts a collection of more than 6,000 objects that make it one of the most important fashion museums in the world. It traces the history of fashion from the sixteenth century to the present day, with dresses and accessories designed by the major Italian and international designers.
For the twentieth-century section, alongside the complete wardrobes of famous personalities such as Eleonora Duse, there is also a major collection of costumes made for cinema and the theatre, including a substantial contribution by Umberto Tirelli.
Tirelli was the founder of a famous theatrical costumiers. Dresses and accessories are exhibited in rotation to better conserve the fragile garments.

On the ground floor of the Uffizi Gallery, in the three rooms of San Pier Scheraggio, old and new co-exist in architectural structures that evoke their original religious purpose.

Hanging opposite each other on the walls of the second room are two enormous depictions of battles: the Battaglia di San Martino [Battle of San Martino], painted by Corrado Cagli for the 1936 Milan Triennial and the Battaglia di Ponte dell’Ammiraglio [Battle of Ponte dell’Ammiraglio], painted by Renato Guttuso in 1951–52. The first was delivered to the gallery in 1983, the second purchased in 2006.

The osmotic relationship between ancient and modern in Guttuso’s scene also applies to its content, since the features of some Garibaldini correspond to leaders in the Communist Party, but are portrayed in the mêlée as supporters of Garibaldi. Shown as companion pieces, the two great representations are presented as icons of the intrepid period that led to the Unification of Italy, with allusions to the people’s uprising against the dictatorship which, in the twentieth century, was to gradually consolidate that unity.

Additional modern takes on the old are also provided by White Black (1969) by Alberto Burri.

The purity of classical mythology is revised in Marino Marini’s Pomona (1941), gifted to the gallery by his wife in 1987, and in Venturini Venturi’s Donna seduta [Seated woman] from 1952, gifted in 2009 by his niece Lucia Fiaschi.
The two bronzes have an air of classical nobility as they face each other in the room before the apse of the church: they are emblematic of a venerable gallery’s aspiration to keep up to date.

The Corridoio Vasariano [Vasari Corridor] houses a selection from the Uffizi’s collection of self-portraits.

Since 2013, 130 self-portraits by twentieth-century Italian and foreign artists have been hung in the final section of the Corridor. Heading these more recent additions is Pomeriggio a Fiesole [Afternoon in Fiesole] by Baccio Maria Bacci, followed by Italian painters of the first three decades of the twentieth century.

The meditative interludes offered by the likenesses of Morandi and Conti are followed by Futurist paintings by Balla (two), Ferrazzi, Thayaht, and De Chirico.

Next come the signatories to the Manifesto of the Pittori moderni della realtà [Modern Painters of Reality] (1947), while the art of the Renaissance is reworked by Carrà, taking us up to the classic abstract artists, Berti and Nativi. Finally, between lyrical “figurative” choices and studies in the objective reality of painting, this section draws to a close taking us up to the 1980s.

In comparison, the foreign artists documented the Florentine expatriate life, often translated into life-style choices in residences in villas in the hills, which favoured the arrival at the Uffizi of self-portraits from the foreign contingent: Böcklin, Larsson, Zorn, Ensor and others. But around the middle of the century the languages began to break down leaving room for experimentation, for a radiographic assemblage (Rauschenberg) or photographic personifications of the concept of “social art” (Beuys). Just after Pistoletto’s mirror work, the Corridor turns again to house some self-portraits by sculptors such as Ceroli, Brolis, Marini and Venturi; then come Mitoraj, Barni, Fabre, followed by video self-portraits by Bill Viola and Ketty La Rocca.

The wall opposite is used for recent acquisitions, which are shown in rotation. The most recent acquisitions include Paolini, Accardi, Paladino, Clemente, Holzer, Sugimoto and Kusama.

After work to restore and renovate the church of San Pancrazio, another museum was added to the San Pancrazio complex to house the valuable collection of sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints donated to the city of Florence by Marino Marini (1901-1980) the year he died and on subsequent occasions by his widow. The works can be seen displayed over three different levels in atmospheric surroundings.

They document the artist’s career between Tuscany and Milan, from his youthful experiences marked by his fascination with Etruscan clay modelling, to the rapprochement with Arturo Martini; the later post-war period takes in his fruitful contacts with the New York art scene, his contacts and experimentations alongside internationally renowned sculptors such as Moore, Arp, Calder, and Tanguy.

Below the church, in the generous crypt, is a bright exhibition space dedicated mainly to contemporary art. Since 1993, the Italian department of education has been involved in running workshops and guided tours for children, families and adults in a very full programme of activities, and is particularly sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities.

The modern art gallery on the second floor of the Pitti Palace was created as a result of an agreement between the Italian state and the Comune of Florence in June 1914.

It houses paintings and sculptures from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Following the Neoclassical, Romantic, Macchiaioli and late nineteenth-century works of art in these stunning rooms, come the areas dedicated to figurative art and the role “Il Marzocco” and “Leonardo” journals played in discussion of this art.

The itinerary continues with rooms dedicated to the painter Giovanni Costetti (1874-1949), to the European influences on Tuscan art in the 1920s, and finally to the major exhibition that was the Primaverile of 1922. The selection of works on show — only a part of the rich heritage — included the principal exponents of Italian twentieth-century figurative art. They stood in contrast to the Tuscan Novecento group, who favoured the magazine “Solaria” and Le Giubbe Rosse cafe.
The city in the 1920s was thus a great meeting place for the best artists and intellectuals in Italy. In the post-war period the gallery continued to add to its collections thanks to the acquisition of prize-winning work in the various editions of the Fiorino, which according to the prize’s statutes were destined for the gallery. In addition to acquisitions, there was an equally large number of gifts, which still today bear witness to the close links between the gallery and the city.

Opened in June 2014 and dedicated to the twentieth-century Italian art, the Novecento Museum offers a selection of around 300 works, owned by the Comune of Florence or given on loan, displayed over 15 exhibition areas, in addition to a room for conferences and screenings, and 18 multimedia access points distributed along the path.

The artworks are arranged in reverse chronological order and following a thematic and interdisciplinary setup. The core collections of greatest interest are the prestigious Alberto Della Ragione Collection and the large group of works that arrived after the 1966 flood in Florence, when Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti launched a call for the creation of an International Museum of Contemporary Art.
The Museum project creates a historical tale that links the civic collections to the history of the city from the 1990s to the beginning of the century, and also integrates the heritage with testimonies of national and international artistic events that took place in the region in the last 40 years of the century.

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In the fourteenth-century Palazzo della Mercanzia, careful renovation has given rise to spare elegant rooms where since 2011 visitors can trace the history of the fashion house founded in Florence in 1921 by Guccio Gucci.

The tour starts on the ground floor, where, for example, the room dedicated to “travel” records the early days of the young Gucci.
On the first floor other themed rooms are to be found, such as the room dedicated to the “Flora” motif, designed in 1966 by the illustrator Vittorio Accornero, the room for handbags, where you can see how the models have evolved, or the room dedicated to evening wear, with gowns worn by celebrated actresses.

On the second floor visitors can see how the double G monogram has changed or explore other topics such as sport. The museum has a very active contemporary art section, while the lower ground floor houses the archives.