The most interesting Museums of Florence: Opificio delle Pietre Dure

Posted on by Betty

The visit to the Museum of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, literally meaning workshop of semi-precious stones, is the perfect choice for whoever has already seen the main museums and galleries of the city and is now looking for something peculiar and characteristic during his stay, away from the crowd.

The story of the Museum of the Opificio begins in the distant 1588, when it was only a dedicated workshop. It is in fact thanks to the Family of Medici, great art supporters sensitive to mosaics and hard stone carvings, that the Opificio was born and continued its activity till our days, when it became the only museum uniquely dedicated to this theme.

opificio firenze

It is indeed an enriching and unique experience to visit this museum, where you can admire stone masterpieces resembling real paintings for how beautiful they are, going through a historical and didactic itinerary. At the centre of the works, between artisanal pieces designed for the middle class and precious artistic ornaments, stands out the use of the “commesso fiorentino”. But what is it exactly? To explain it in few words, the commesso fiorentino is nothing but the mosaic practice that uses the natural colours of the stones, carving them into specific shapes and pulling them together to create the desired patterns. Pure beauty!

Historically talking, the Opificio saw good and bad moments, reaching a definitive financial crisis after Italy’s Unification, when it eventually lost the support from the court. Nevertheless, it obtained its importance as institution, and nowadays, in its main location in via degli Alfani, you can find not only the museum, but also its restoration workshops and the famous school for restorers (Scuola di Alta Formazione e di Studio SAFS), directly sustained by the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo. Peculiar fact about this school is above all its prestige at a national and international level, offering highly selective degree courses of the duration of five years, to which very few students can have access to, in order to learn how to practically restore work pieces on real international commissions.

It is good to know that the activity of the Opificio is not only supported by the Ministry, but also from a private association formed by this florentine institution’s lovers, that from 2005 is giving continuous and consistent support to its activities and its promulgation: Gli Amici dell’Opificio. Anybody can join, establishing a special relationship with the Opificio, that will allow you to have access to private tours to the exhibitions, to participate to conferences and several events of the sector, and to get exceptional discounts on buying the masterpieces produced at the Opificio.

museo opificio

Here at Il Guelfo Bianco we had the honour to meet two tour guides of excellence on our visit at the museum: Mrs Annalisa Innocenti, Supervisor from Amici dell’Opificio, and Sandra Rossi, Director of the museum of the Opificio. They helped us throughout our visit, giving us an amazing and customised experience, between curiosities and hidden facts about this place, unique in the world!

The Museum of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, only 2 minutes away from our hotel in Florence, is the perfect destination for those who stay at Hotel Il Guelfo Bianco. Moreover, for groups, it is possible to ask the hotel to arrange special guided tours, in order to have direct contact with the main representatives of the museum and possible access to ongoing workshops: an exclusive and exciting experience only for you!

For any information, feel free to ask our team at the front desk or to write us at info@ilguelfobianco.it

We will help you to organise every single magic moment of your days in Florence!

 

Uffizi Gallery: facts and curiosities about the most famous museum of Italy

Posted on by Betty

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Vasari’s masterpiece located only 10 minutes from our hotel Il Guelfo Bianco, is today the most visited museum in Italy and in the world, thanks to its Renaissance artistic endowment. Giotto, Cimabue, Michelangelo; these are only few names that are always linked to the Uffizi name and that every year bring thousands and thousands of visitors from all over the world. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Leonardo’s Annunciation… Even those that are not really into art know that the Uffizi museum must be visited at least once in a lifetime!

What even the most experts don’t know though, is that the Uffizi Gallery has not always been today’s beauty and history chef-d’oeuvre from the Medici, lords of Florence. The horseshoe building in fact, dates back to the 15th century, when Cosimo of Tuscany decided to demolish the old Baldracca’s neighborhood in the heart of the city, that was famous for crime and prostitution (fyi: even today Baldracca in Italian is a word that designs something very old and in bad conditions). Doing this, he created space to erect the unique building for the 13 most important Florentine jurisdictions of the time.

Galleria degli Uffizi Firenze

With the end of the Medici’s dynasty, the last heiress Anna Maria Luisa De’ Medici, with the famous Family Pact, decided to donate all the family treasures to the State of Tuscany, in order to share with the world such beauties, while keeping them inside Florence’s borders. It is like this that the Uffizi became the first real modern museum of Europe.

“as ornament of the State, for Public utility and to attract the curiosity of Foreigners”

Since then, many stories have been told behind the Uffizi’s walls and portraits, inspiring the big international names of Literature and Art.

Ever heard of the Stendhal Syndrome? The writer itself in fact, while visiting the Uffizi Gallery back in the 1817, overwhelmed by such beauty and marvel, ended up overcome with emotion and sudden illness. Because of him, such condition took the name of Stendhal’s syndrome, describing a psychosomatic pathology in which, in front of particularly evocative artworks, it is possible to experience panic attacks, general illness, accelerate heartbeat, fainting feeling etc. From this episode took inspiration also Dario Argento (famous Italian film director), where the protagonist of his movie, faints in front of Brunelleschi’s painting, experiencing the same syndrome as Stendhal’s.

Talking about movies, recent is also the filming of Inferno, bestseller screen adaptation of Dan Brown’s book, where the renowned professor Langdon, is again involved with an artistic thriller. Right inside the Uffizi has been indeed filmed one of the main scenes of the movie, in which Robert Langdon and Sienna are escaping their enemies, running from Boboli through the famous Vasari Corridor (old Medici’s escape passage), linking Pitti’s Palace to the Uffizi.

If you are already imagining yourself imitating Langdon running from Boboli to the Uffizi, Alas! Today it is not anymore a real walking area open to visitors, but has only been opened for the filming of Inferno’s movie. Nevertheless, it is possible to go from the inside of the Uffizi Gallery to the top of the Vasari Corridor, on a private tour, so to have a unique view of Florence.

firenze uffizi

Worried about avoiding long queues and having your tickets to enter the Uffizi’s museum without issues? No problem! Booking direct your stay at Il Guelfo Bianco through our website, it will be in fact possible on request, to have your tickets all booked from our team! We will think of it all, leaving you only to worry about what to put inside your suitcase!

If you haven’t yet been in Florence and visited the Uffizi Gallery, or you are planning to come back, next time you are there ready to enter the museum, try thinking of how it was before and how beautiful it is nowadays. Think about how a place that once was considered a dangerous and dirty area is today one of the most important artistic heritages in the world.

At the end, as the beautiful lotus flower growing in muddy waters, also historical masterpieces like the Uffizi Gallery can appear in places where before there was no form of beauty at all. Here at our boutique hotel full of art installations, we know what it means!

You just need to learn how to look at the world with different eyes.

Reserve your room at Hotel Il Guelfo Bianco of Florence and discover all the magic behind the Uffizi Gallery!

Artisanal ice cream in Florence

Posted on by Marco Irrera

There are many ice cream parlours which offer and boast authentic artisanal ice cream in Florence, but one above all the rest stands out for quality, taste and tradition: Gelateria Carabè.

The owner Antonio Lisciandro has ice cream in his DNA, as his family was making ice cream before the machines came along that replaced the genius and the manual skills of the human being, back when they were still calling it iced flavoured water and granita hadn’t appeared yet.

In his laboratories, one of which is entirely surrounded by glass in order to reveal every part of the preparation, fresh ingredients get turned into ice cream, fully respecting their original flavours and following the natural produce of the seasons.

Tasting the ice cream of Antonio Lisciandro means fully merging with fruit and aromatic spices in a leap back to the origins of an ice cream that never forgot the evolution of taste, on the contrary, it brings to mind the teachings of the real artisans of the three major Italian schools: Sicilian, Tuscan and Venetian.

In a world oriented to homologation and to the consequent loss of cultural, artistic and culinary identity, the philosophy of Gelateria Carabè is to bring back the value of differences through production that is centred on fresh ingredients and the customer.

The latter is actually the recipient of an “iced emotion” through which it is possible to taste the quality of real artisanal ice cream once more, born in the heart of Florence, in Forte dei Marmi and on the Valdarno hills, at Parco Carabè, which is a twenty-minute-drive from our hotel.

Here, the ice cream factory charms each guest with real tastings and lessons about the main ingredients such as fruits, which are seen, smelt and rediscovered in all of their shades in the ice cream served.

An artisan of ice cream turns the ingredients into pure emotion without stealing their soul, without violating them with alterations and processes such as the addition of fats and sugars, which have more to do with business than with nature.

When we thought of an ice cream to include on the menu of our restaurant Il Desco Bistrot, we discovered we had very much in common with Antonio Lisciandro, like the passion for real authentic tastes, without undergoing the same artificial processes of certain gluten free products.

All this convinced us to ask him to offer you another healthy delicacy during your stay in Florence. We too feel like artisans of hospitality, after all!

Reserve your room at the ’Hotel Il Guelfo Bianco of Florence and discover all the flavours of Italian artisanal ice cream!