Cradle with baby, 1695 ca. Collezione Tesoro dei Granduchi Palazzo Pitti FIRENZE

Climbing a private staircase you arrive on the mezzanine: in these thirteen more intimate, almost “secret” rooms, you will really feel like you are entering a treasure chest of fabulous richness: with the precious materials sparkling in the windows, the luxury of the furniture decorated with stone panels hard, the ceilings frescoed with magnificence. Here too the objects are divided into classes of materials, worked with incomparable art.

In the collection of engraved jewels, small busts and bas-reliefs in gold, enamel and semi-precious stones, I would like to point out a beautiful oval plaque depicting Piazza della Signoria. The shop windows overflow with magnificence and limitless imagination: you will also be intrigued by the statuettes and automatons made by German goldsmiths between the 16th and 17th centuries.

You will then find an unusual collection of German sacred silverware from the 15th to the 19th century: this is the treasure that Grand Duke Ferdinand III of Lorraine brought back to Florence when he returned to the city in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna. Don’t miss the portable altar in gilt silver and mother of pearl in particular.

But the part of the museum that will probably surprise you the most is the one dedicated to exotic non-European objects: the Medici’s passion for distant curiosities also gave rise to an important anthropology museum in Florence and contributed to the presence of essences and flowers from every continent in the ancient botanical garden. Here you can admire ceramic vases from the Far East, shells from the Pacific Ocean, African rhinoceros horns and even clothes for the Catholic liturgy made of bird feathers, according to the Aztec technique, by Mexican artists in the first half of the 16th century.

After the exhibition of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, in the last rooms you will find a selection of contemporary jewels in gold, platinum, copper and steel, and a collection of over one hundred miniatures from the 18th and 19th centuries. A real gem is the collection of 58 casts of the silver trays that Cardinal Lazzaro Pallavicini gave to the Medici every year starting from 1680. Unfortunately the precious originals have been lost and these plaster casts, which were taken to make ceramic copies , they are all that remains of it.