Palazzo Medici Riccardi & the Magi Chapel
Why is it significant?
Stand on Via Cavour, the street Florentines once called Via Larga, and look at the massive palace on the corner. At street level the stones are rough, almost raw boulders; on the floor above they are smoother; at the top they are smooth, under a colossal overhanging cornice.
Key Facts
| Place | Palazzo Medici Riccardi & the Magi Chapel |
|---|---|
| Address | Via Camillo Cavour 3, 50129 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77530, 11.25570 |
| Part of Walk | The Medici Quarter of Florence: Palaces, Tombs and Rivals from San Lorenzo to Santa Maria Novella |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on Via Cavour, the street Florentines once called Via Larga, and look at the massive palace on the corner. At street level the stones are rough, almost raw boulders; on the floor above they are smoother; at the top they are smooth, under a colossal overhanging cornice. Strength below, refinement above. That is the Medici, explained in masonry.
Cosimo de' Medici, the banker remembered as Cosimo the Elder, had the palace built from 1444 by his architect Michelozzo. Vasari tells a story that Brunelleschi offered him a far grander design, and that Cosimo turned it down because in Florence envy was more dangerous than any army... and that Brunelleschi smashed his model in a rage. Cosimo never held a title. He ran the Republic from his bank and from this house, through friends placed in office.
Upstairs hides a jewel box, the Chapel of the Magi, painted by Benozzo Gozzoli in 1459. The three kings ride across the Tuscan hills in a dazzling procession of horses, falcons, hunting leopards and courtiers in brocade. Scholars have spotted Medici family members among the riders, and Benozzo himself, who wrote his name on his own cap. The pageant also recalls the great church council of 1439, when the Byzantine emperor came to Florence to try to heal the split between East and West.
Lorenzo the Magnificent grew up in these rooms, filled them with poets and philosophers, and took in a teenage Michelangelo, who ate at the family table. And the corner where you are standing was once an open loggia. It was walled up in the early 1500s, and its so-called kneeling windows, resting on big stone brackets, are attributed to Michelangelo.
In 1659 the Medici sold the palace to the Riccardi family, who lengthened it, and that is why it carries both names. Today it is the seat of the local government, still a palace of power. Now walk round the corner, along the side of the palace, to the family church with its bare brick front.