The Apartments of the Duchess of Aosta at Pitti Palace open to visitors
On September 29th, on the occasion of the 2024 EHD and, every Sunday from November
The luxurious Duchess's Apartment, where the widow of Duke Amedeo d'Aosta, Anne of France, lived until Pitti Palace was donated to the Italian State after World War II, are now permanently accessible to visitors. In the past decades, its rooms have been visible on very rare occasions. Now the doors of the Apartment located on the second floor of the palace, open to the public on 29 September, on the occasion of the European Heritage Days. Then, a calendar of guided tours are scheduled on every Sunday, starting from November.
The current arrangement is the result of a scrupulous restoration that has reconstructed the nineteenth-century rooms through court inventories.
The aim of this part of the palace has never changed over the centuries. From the end of the sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, its rooms were intended for the private lives of the illustrious family members who lived there. The Apartment is made up of several rooms, some of which overlook the Boboli Gardens. For this reason it was particularly appreciated by Grand Dukes, kings, queens, duchesses and princes. It was built in the Medicean age, when Cosimo I de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo purchased the palace to turn it into a Grand Ducal residence, and was later intended for Maria de' Medici, future queen of France and niece of Cosimo. In the mid-seventeenth century, these rooms became the residence of Ferdinando II de'Medici and Vittoria della Rovere; then hosted the extraordinary collection of manuscripts, mathematical instruments and works of art of Cardinal Leopoldo who met here with the Accademia del Cimento, founded by him in 1657. With the passage to the Habsburg-Lorraine family, from 1790 until the arrival of the Savoys, it took the name of "Winter Quarter": in this period, under the rule of Grand Duke Ferdinand III, the Apartment underwent the most important architectural interventions, which gave it the modern look that it still retains today.
The arrival of the Savoys determined the end of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the entire Quarter became the residence of the Kings of Italy (1865-1911). It was called "Apartment of His Majesty the King". The Savoys changed the furnishings and tapestries, giving the rooms the look with which they are currently on view. The ambiance that can still be glimpsed was due to the flair of Anne of France, widow of Duke Amedeo of Aosta, the last person to live in this apartment and the reason why it bears her name, "Apartment of the Duchess of Aosta".
The director of the Uffizi Galleries Simone Verde: "The opening, for the first time in a regular manner, of the Apartment of the Duchess of Aosta marks an important first step in the relaunch plan of Pitti Palace. The opening of captivating premises of the Palace to the public will go on: in the coming months, after many years, the beautiful rooms of the Treasury of the Grand Dukes on the ground floor will be open to visitors again at the end of a long restoration and complex rearrangement, while on the first floor, starting in the coming weeks, the same will happen with the rooms of the Royal Apartments".
