Palazzo Davanzati: The Kitchen at the Top
Why is it significant?
On Via Porta Rossa, find the tall, narrow palace with three rows of windows, iron rings and hooks across the stone, and an open loggia right under the roof. The rings held poles for banners, for torches, for laundry, and for the hunting birds of the household.
Key Facts
| Place | Palazzo Davanzati: The Kitchen at the Top |
|---|---|
| Address | Via Porta Rossa 13, 50123 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77010, 11.25290 |
| Part of Walk | Tripe, Truffles and Wine Windows: A Food Lover's Walk Through Florence |
| Generated | Generated |
On Via Porta Rossa, find the tall, narrow palace with three rows of windows, iron rings and hooks across the stone, and an open loggia right under the roof. The rings held poles for banners, for torches, for laundry, and for the hunting birds of the household.
It was built in the fourteenth century by the Davizzi, a merchant family, and in 1578 it passed to Bernardo Davanzati, a man of letters remembered for translating the Roman historian Tacitus. Early in the twentieth century an antiques dealer, Elia Volpi, bought it, restored it and filled it with furniture, and today it is the Museum of the Old Florentine House, the best place in the city to see how a rich family really lived.
Here is the surprise: the kitchen is at the top. Fire was the great terror of a medieval city, and smoke and cooking smells were not wanted in the rooms where guests were received. So the hearth went upstairs, close to the roof, where the smoke could escape and a fire would do the least damage. Servants carried wood and food up the stairs... but not water. A shaft from the well in the courtyard rose through every floor, so with a rope and a bucket each storey could draw its own. Fourteenth-century plumbing, and a real luxury.
Imagine the household at table. The wine came from the family's own farms in the countryside, the bread was unsalted, and meat was a sign of status, served on feast days with spices brought by Florentine merchants from the other side of the Mediterranean. Upstairs, the walls are painted to look as if they were hung with rich fabrics: one room with parrots, and a bedroom with a tragic love story from a French romance.
From the kitchen at the top, we go to a shop that has been feeding elegant Florence for well over a century. Continue west along Via Porta Rossa to the wide Via de' Tornabuoni, and turn right, walking north between the fashion windows.