Guided tours of the new storerooms of the Florentine Civic Museums. Here's when and how to visit them

Starting February 3, 2024, guided tours of the new storerooms of the Florentine Civic Museums are scheduled every Saturday of the month (at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. and 12 p.m.), curated by MUS.E. The storerooms, inside the Santa Maria Novella complex, were built on a project of the Technical Services Department of the City of Florence in collaboration with the Culture and Sports Department, as part of the campaign to upgrade the rooms of the Santa Maria Novella complex freed in 2016 from the Carabinieri School of Marshals and Brigadiers. The works cost about two million euros for the part of the renovation of the rooms as part of the transformation of the entire complex and almost 40 thousand euros for the part of transportation and staging, with plans to spend an additional 200 thousand euros for the next stages of increasing the works on display. In this first phase, in fact, about three hundred works belonging to the Alberto Della Ragione collection and other nuclei of the Collections of the Twentieth Century have already been arranged. To these will gradually be added the remaining part of the twentieth-century collections, functional to the exhibition rotations of the nearby Museo Novecento, the sinopites from the fresco cycle of the Green Cloister of Santa Maria Novella, some nineteenth-century collections including that of the former Museum of the Risorgimento and the legacy of Icilio Cappellini including paintings by the Macchiaioli, the unexhibited works of the former Museo storico-topografico Firenze com’era, and a large collection of marbles, plaster casts and stone artifacts of various origins, for an estimated total of about 4.500 goods. Artists on display include Lucio Fontana, Renato Guttuso, Carlo Carrà, Filippo De Pisis, Mario Mafai, Corrado Cagli, and Giorgio Morandi.

The new storage rooms are housed in a part of the building bordering the western arm of the Chiostro Grande. Various functions have followed one another in these ancient rooms over the centuries: Papal Apartments, construction site of Leonardo’s cartoon of the Battle of Anghiari, dormitories of the New Monastery, the Santissima Annunziata Female Educandato and finally barracks of the Scuola allievi sottufficiali dei Carabinieri. Long inaccessible because they were included in the barracks, thanks to the redevelopment implemented by the Municipal Administration, today these spaces are coming back to life.

The depots occupy an area of 1,100 square meters, arranged on three floors. On the ground floor, the rooms consist of a large 290-square-meter vaulted room that houses the Sculpture Gallery set up with platforms, plinths, shelves, and shelving for statues, busts, and various stone materials. The storage rooms on the second floor have an area of about 650 square meters distributed in nine rooms. In the two largest rooms, massive self-supporting metal structures have been built, some of which are already equipped with large, double-sided, sliding grating panels that ensure that the paintings can be viewed on both sides. Additional display and conservation equipment has been provided in the other rooms, not only grids, but also drawers and shelving to place heterogeneous artifacts. Additional spaces for office and laboratory functions for maintenance work complete the storage rooms.

The large spaces allow public accessibility through guided tours by reservation. Reservations are always required by calling 055-2768224 or writing to info@musefirenze.it.

Entrance from Piazza Stazione, 4. Duration of visit: 50 minutes

Tickets: full price 6 euros, reduced 3 euros for 18-25 year olds and university students, free for under 18, tour guides and interpreters, journalists, disabled people and their escorts, Florentine Card holders, ICOM, ICOMOS, ICCROM members). Access to the Santa Maria Novella complex is not included.

Guided tours of the new storerooms of the Florentine Civic Museums. Here's when and how to visit them

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