Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

If you are going to spend your holidays into a luxury villa in Florence or nearby you may visit the Palazzo Strozzi, one of the finest examples of Renaissance domestic architecture.

The construction of the palace begun in 1489 and was finished in 1538. This Palace was the house of the Strozzi family until 1937. The Strozzi family was an ancient and noble Florentine family.

The Palazzo Strozzi has a permanent exhibition of the history of the palace, a café/bar and hosts many temporary exhibitions every year.

Until January 22nd 2012, the Palazzo Strozzi is hosting the exhibition: Money and beauty. Bankers, Botticelli and the bonfire of vanities in Florence.

Masterpieces by Botticelli, Beato Angelico, Piero del Pollaiolo, the Della Robbia family and Lorenzo di Credi - the cream of Renaissance artists - show how the modern banking system developed in parallel alongside the most important artistic flowering in the history of the Western world.

Money and Beauty. Bankers, Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities recounts the birth of our modern banking system and of the economic boom that it triggered, providing a reconstruction of European life and the continent's economy from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

The exhibition takes the visitor on a journey to the roots of Florentine power in Europe, but it also explores the economic mechanisms which allowed the Florentines to dominate the world of trade and business 500 years before modern communication methods were invented, and in so doing, to finance the Renaissance. 

The exhibition analyses the systems that bankers used to build up their immense fortunes, it illustrates the way in which they handled international relations and it also sheds light on the birth of modern art patronage, which frequently began as a penitential gesture only to then turn into a tool for wielding power.

The exhibition also uses the detailed depiction of episodes in bankers’ daily lives (the work of several leading Flemish artists) to illustrate the era when Florence was the financial capital of the world, and an array of multimedia tools help the visitor to get a clear perception of the ways in which trade was conducted and money travelled throughout the known world at the time.