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Palazzo PittiPalazzo Pitti ranks as Florence's most importance palazzo together with the Palazzo Vecchio (they are joined by a passage) and the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. Palazzo Pitti's architectural project, commissioned by the rich Florentine merchant Luca Pitti and begun around 1457, is believed to have been conceived by Filippo Brunelleshi and made by Luca Fanelli. The original building was a block on three floors, definitely smaller than today. Three doors and four windows on the main façade, with seven entrances instead of the current twenty-three, as witnessed by the Pianta della Catena (1470) and the Veduta di Pietro del Massaio (1472). The palace was built in accordance to the ancient Pitti's residence, still visible in the fresco painted by Vasari where the artist represented the "Assedio di Firenze" (Besiege of Florence 1529-1530). Luca Pitti also bought the houses between his property and the street at the foot of the hill, in order to demolish them and create a large piazza in front of the new palace. When Luca died, in 1472, the building was left unfinished: at the basement and first floor there were habitable rooms and halls, while the second floor had not been finished off. His descendants did not continue the works, but lived inside the palace until the first half of the XVI century, when Eleonora di Toledo, Cosimo I's wife and Duchess of Florence, bought it along with the piazza and other houses. The property spread out eight hectares, one third of the current surface. The Medicean family destined some of the soils to cultivate olive, vine, fruit and flowers. The building was enlarged, the interior decorated luxuriously and the Boboli hills were landscaped into gardens. It then became the residence of the Lorena family who constructed, in the XVIII century, two lateral wings with porticoes which came round either side of the central piazza. It was the residence of Vittorio Emanuele II when Florence was the capital from 1865 to 1871. In 1919 it became state property and visitors were permitted entry to the Royal Apartments, the Galleria Palatina, the Museo degli Argenti, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, the Galleria del Costume, the Museo delle Porcellane, the Museo delle Carrozze (closed for restoration) and the Giardino di Boboli . Temporary exhibitions are shown in the White Room.
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