Museo Firenze com'era

Via dell’Oriuolo, 24

Housed in the ex-convent that belonged to the Oblate sisters of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, the museum offers rich documentation of the transformations of the city of Florence from the Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth century. The museum of history and topography was established in 1909 with the intention of documenting parts of Florence that had disappeared following the drastic demolition work carried out in the second half of the nineteenth century. After being housed in Casa Buonarroti and the Convent of San Marco, in 1955 it opened to the public in its charming current location under the new name of “Firenze com’era”.

Significant paintings, prints and sculptures provide a good range of images of Florence. The collection of maps on display in the first rooms – one of the most important and complete collections of its kind – shows the changes in the shape of the city over the centuries: alongside a large nineteenth-century reproduction of the Pianta della Catena, an engraving of 1470, we find the first perspective map of Florence made by Stefano Buonsignori. The etchings by Valerio Spada and Giovanni Maggi, as well as the meticulous portrayals of the main monuments by Giuseppe Zocchi, are some of the works representing the seventeenth and eighteenth-century city. The Mercato Vecchio and the Jewish ghetto, depicted before they were destroyed, are testimony to the great changes in the appearance of the city that took place in the nineteenth century. Dotted along the itinerary are the famous lunettes of the Medici villas by Giusto Utens. Recently, a section on the evolution of the Florentine area, from the first prehistoric settlements to the Roman city, has been added to the exhibition, with archaeological finds from the nineteenth-century excavations in the old part of the city.

The museum’s collections comprise not only what is on display: over 5,000 papers, including drawings, watercolours and prints, today housed in the city’s historic archive (Archivio Storico Comunale, Via dell’Oriuolo 33), are a priceless source for getting to know Florentine architecture, art and customs.