Palazzo Nonfinito & the Buontalenti Gelato Legend
Why is it significant?
Stop at the corner where Borgo degli Albizi meets Via del Proconsolo and look at the big stone palace with heavy, sculpted window frames. Florentines call it the Palazzo Nonfinito, the Unfinished Palace, and for once a nickname tells the plain truth.
Key Facts
| Place | Palazzo Nonfinito & the Buontalenti Gelato Legend |
|---|---|
| Address | Via del Proconsolo 12, 50122 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77180, 11.25810 |
| Part of Walk | Tripe, Truffles and Wine Windows: A Food Lover's Walk Through Florence |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop at the corner where Borgo degli Albizi meets Via del Proconsolo and look at the big stone palace with heavy, sculpted window frames. Florentines call it the Palazzo Nonfinito, the Unfinished Palace, and for once a nickname tells the plain truth.
It was begun in 1593 for Alessandro Strozzi, and the first architect was Bernardo Buontalenti. Several others took turns after him, and the building never received the completion it was designed for. Since the twentieth century it has housed the city's museum of anthropology, founded in 1869 by the scientist Paolo Mantegazza, the oldest of its kind in Italy.
Buontalenti himself was the Medici's all-round genius. He built villas and fortresses, designed garden grottoes, and invented stage machinery for court spectacles, clouds that descended, seas that moved. Florentines nicknamed him Bernardo delle Girandole, Bernardo of the Catherine wheels, because nobody staged fireworks like him.
And then there is the legend. The story goes that for a Medici banquet Buontalenti served a frozen cream of milk, honey, egg yolks and a dash of wine, chilled with the snow and ice the court kept through the summer in deep, straw-lined ice houses. Historians will tell you that iced drinks and sorbets were already known, and that nobody can name the day gelato was born. But by the late sixteenth century Italian natural philosophers had described the trick that made it possible: mix salt or saltpetre into crushed ice, and it becomes cold enough to freeze a jug of wine.
Legend or not, walk into almost any gelateria in Florence and you will find a pale, egg-rich flavour called crema Buontalenti. The city has decided who invented ice cream, and it is not taking questions. Now head south down Via del Proconsolo, past the fortress-like Bargello, and on to the corner of Via dei Neri, where Florence once sold its grain.