Tesoro dei Granduchi
The Museum is located in the Summer Apartments on the ground floor and on the mezzanine floor of the Pitti Palace.
The Granduke Ferdinando I made these rooms decorated in 1635, on the occasion of his wedding with Vittoria della Rovere.
The Museum houses the important Medici’s
Treasure: the semi precious stone vases of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the cameos of Cosimo I, the rock crystal objects of Francesco I, the ambers of Maria Maddalena d’Austria, the wonderful ivory vases of Mattia de Medici and the famous jewels collection belonged to Anna Maria Luisa, the last member of the Medici Family.
The Museum is named after the silvers of the Salzburg Treasure, belonged to the Bishops of Salzburg and brought to Florence by Ferdinand III of Lorena in 1815. The Museum also houses an important collection of jewels made between the 17th and the 20th century by the most important Italian and European workshops.
An important new section devoted to the Contemporary Jewellery has recently been opened to testify the vitality of this historical Museum. A new setting houses the Japanese and Chinese Medici’s porcelain collection, started from the Medici Family in the 15th century: in the same room is now showed another important collection, given to the Museum by the Scalabrino Family, including Japanese and Chinese porcelains and some European maiolicas.
On the mezzanine floor of the museum it is possible to visit an extraordinary collection of miniature portraits, executed between the mid-sixteenth and the twentieth century, illustrating the principal schools of production: French, English, Italian, German, Austrian and American.
