Stibbert Museum

The dream of a young Englishman, rich and spendthrift, but also extremely cultured, a lover of beauty, art, the history of costume and antique weapons: this, in short, is the Stibbert Museum.

Together we will retrace the life of this extraordinary personage, of English father and Florentine mother, who at the age of 21 found himself heir to an immense fortune. Frederick Stibbert used his inheritance to buy everything. The museum contains a Madonna by Botticelli, the funeral corselet of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere and the Petit Costume d'Italie, the dress worn by Napoleon for the coronation ceremonies as King of Italy in 1805 in Milan. The Sala della Cavalcata is sublime: a hall twenty metres long, eight metres wide and eleven metres high, where 12 knights on horseback are arranged, perfectly dressed and armed. It is not surprising that Mussolini wanted it in Palazzo Vecchio to show it to Hitler during the Fuhrer's trip to Italy. We cannot miss the Japanese collection, one of the most important in the world outside Japan: a journey through space and time that will catapult us to the Far East.

What Stibbert calls "the museum I own" was his home: we will get lost, therefore, in the halls and bedrooms, telling anecdotes and curiosities. A lover of comfort, the villa had gas lighting and heating; Stibbert was among the first Florentines to have a telephone line.

This is really only a small part of this little-known museum, but where the objects on display really seem to come to life, thanks to the creativity of its founder. At the end of the museum tour, a short walk in the romantic English garden. Among the museum's visitors was Queen Victoria, who wanted to visit the villa during a stay in Florence in 1894. Would you like to be one of them?