Night at the Museo

Buon Giorno,

One of the highlights of Florence for the kids was our nighttime tour of the Museo di Palazzo di Vecchio (above), where the guide promised to show the kids all the secret passages and rooms of the palace.

Here's Tommy right before the tour.

The palace was built around the 13th century and has been used (and is still used) as both a museum and the town hall for Florence. Touring it at night gave us the chance to see the place without the crowds. After going up through a secret staircase to the second floor...

we visited one of the grandest rooms, where parties in the 16th century were so extravagant that the Medici family (the ruling family) once had gardens, fountains and birds in bread cages brought in for a party in an elaborate room with a gold leaf ceiling. Tommy and Anna learned about how the craftsman created the gold leaf ceiling: Artists would take the gold coins that served as the currency then, pound them with a special hammer until they were very thin, and then paint the thin gold sheets onto a wooden surface that had first been coated with “rabbit glue” (didn’t ask how that was made). Then the artists would use either a very sharp stone -- or better yet, wild boars’ teeth -- to scrape the thin gold as flat and as thin as possible.

Before leaving, we had a chance to see the hidden compartments and rooms located behind each of the 15th century maps in the geography room, where the Medici family had mounted maps of nearly everywhere in the world with the exception of Australia.

Ciao,

Kim