Audiotour Guerre Horrende

At the heart of the Renaissance, Florence knew not only art and splendor, but also wars and conspiracies that would forever alter its destiny. On June 29, 1440, in the plain of Anghiari, Florentine troops led by Cosimo the Elder clashed with the army of the Visconti of Milan. The victory was not merely military: it was the salvation of the Republic, the moment when Florence defended its freedom and paved the way for the rise of the family that would shape the centuries to come.

Yet Medici power was never free from threats. From Luca Pitti’s plot against Piero the Gouty to the more famous Pazzi Conspiracy, supported even by Pope Sixtus IV, intrigues followed one another with ferocity. On that day in 1478, during Easter Mass, Giuliano de’ Medici fell, struck down beneath the Duomo’s dome, while Lorenzo the Magnificent, wounded, managed to survive: an attack that turned the cathedral into a field of blood.

A century later, the fate of Tuscany was once again decided on the battlefield. On August 2, 1554, at Marciano della Chiana, in the plain known as Scannagallo, Cosimo I faced the Franco-Sienese forces led by Pietro Strozzi. The clash was fierce, and the victory marked the end of Siena’s independence: from that day forward, Florence was no longer merely a dominant city, but the beating heart of a new State, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

The hall preserves the memory of these events: the model of the Battle of Anghiari, the engraved portraits of the protagonists of Scannagallo, the volumes dedicated to the art of war, and the Statutes of the Order of Saint Stephen, the militia founded by Cosimo to defend the Tuscan coasts from Barbary pirates.