Once ruled by the powerful Medici family, Florence hosts some of the most beautiful treasures of the Italian Renaissance. Among these is the official residence of the Medicis until 1659, known as the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, or the Medici Palace.
In 1444, Cosimo the Elder, the head of the Medici banking family, commissioned this palace as a private residence for his family. The Medici had a tremendous economic and artistic influence in Tuscany and promoted the growth of the Florentine Renaissance.
A pioneer of Italian Renaissance architecture, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, designed the structure. The architect took inspiration from ancient Greek and Roman classical architecture, an essential component of the Renaissance style. This is especially clear in the palace’s rough-textured façade in the rusticated masonry style, a decorative technique used in Roman architecture that highlighted a building’s stone construction. The palace’s façade combines this rough texture with an ashlar decoration (finely worked stone) and double lancet windows; these were popular features of 15th-century Tuscan palaces….