Finally some good news to balance out yesterday’s bad news about the Uffizi. The museum at the top of Orsanmichele – that contains the restored original statues from the outside of this building – is now OPEN to the public on Mondays.
The museum will be open for 7 hours each week thanks to volunteers from the association “Amici dei Musei Fiorentini“. Opening hours are each MONDAY from 10am to 5pm. The decision to open on Mondays is to give tourists something to see when other museums are closed – good idea!
The museum “upstairs” at Orsanmichele has been closed for many years due to budget cutbacks that happened soon after the completion of its display and the cleaning of its sculptures. I was in there in 1999 and fear that by 2001 it was closed, but I cannot find the exact dates. There are copies of the sculptures in the outdoor niches.
The sculptures in the niches of Orsanmichele were made for the Guilds of Florence in the early 15th century and represent the triumphs of early Renaissance sculpture. Some of the most important of these are:
- Nanni di Banco’s “Four crowned martyrs”
- Donatello’s Saint Mark
- Ghiberti’s Saint John the Baptist
- The Doubting Thomas by Verrocchio
[Photo source: http://sandstead.com]
If you like this post you might be interested in this article on late medieval politics in Piazza della Signoria.
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