The city of Florence is home to numerous surviving examples of 20th century art and architecture, several of which are of outstanding importance, yet they frequently go unnoticed. One of the most celebrated Italian cities in the world is often bound within the unquestionably prestigious and unique yet inevitably somewhat constraining confines of the cradle of the Renaissance. This itinerary will guide us through the lesser-known areas of the 20th century city, proving that Florence can also bear fascinating witness to the more recent eras in our history.

The train is scheduled to leave Milano Centrale Railway Station around 8.00 am, arriving in Florence at around 9.30 am. A guide will meet the group at Santa Maria Novella train station and accompany us on the three planned stages of our city tour.

Museo Novecento – © Pietro Savorelli, Lorenzo Valloriani 

Lunch is included in the tour. 

The station of Santa Maria Novella, built between 1933 and 1935 by the Tuscan Group led by famous architect Giovanni Michelucci, is itself considered to be one of the finest examples of the Rationalist architecture that held sway in the ‘thirties. 

Skirting the basilica of Santa Maria Novella, we come on one side of the square to the first of the three stages in our tour. The Museo Novecento is housed in a Renaissance building once occupied by a hospital, the Ospedale di San Paolo. Opened in June 2014 and devoted to Italian art of the 20th century, the museum hosts a selection of around three hundred works, either owned by the city of Florence or on loan, displayed in fifteen exhibition halls, in addition to a room for conferences and screenings and multimedia access points located at intervals around the halls. The exhibits are displayed in reverse chronological order on the basis of a thematic and interdisciplinary layout. The core collections of the greatest interest are the prestigious Alberto Della Ragione Collection and a large group of works which entered the municipal collections after the flood that hit the city in 1966, when Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti launched an appeal for the creation of an International Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum is designed in such a way that the tour forges a historical narrative linking the civic collections to the history of the city from the 1990s  back to the early part of the 20th century, whilst also completing the display with mementos of the national and international artistic events that were held in the region between 1960 and the end of the century. 

The collection includes numerous works by such well-known 20th century artists as Luciano Ori, Mirko Basaldella, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Magnelli, Giorgio Morandi, Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà,Felice Casorati and Renato Guttuso.

A short walk from Piazza Santa Maria Novella, the Museo Marino Marini housed in the former church of San Pancrazio hosts the valuable collection of sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints donated to the city of Florence by Marino Marini (1901–80) in the year he died, and on subsequent occasions by his widow. The works are displayed in a particularly atmospheric environment on three different levels. They illustrate the artist’s career between Tuscany and Milan, from his youthful experience marked by his fascination with Etruscan clay modelling, to his rapprochement with Arturo Martini, while the later postwar period takes in his fruitful contacts with the New York art scene and his contacts and experimentation alongside such internationally renowned sculptors such as Henry Moore, Arp, Calder, and Tanguy. The church’s large crypt has been adapted as an exhibition venue devoted primarily to contemporary art. 

Museo Marino Marini – © Museo Marino Marini

After lunch, the visit continues across the river in the city’s Oltrarno neighbourhood with a tour of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Palazzo Pitti. 

The modern art gallery on the second floor of the Palazzo Pitti, the product of an accord between the Italian government and the city of Florence in June 1914, houses paintings and sculptures from the late 18th to the mid-20th centuries. These dazzling rooms with their display of Neoclassical, Romantic, Macchiaioli and late 19th century works of art, are followed by further rooms devoted to figurative art and to the role that the periodicals Il Marzocco and Leonardo played in the debate surrounding the art of the time. The tour continues with rooms showcasing the work of painter Giovanni Costetti (1874–1949), illustrating the European influences on Tuscan art in the 1920s and exploring the major exhibition known as the Primaverile held in 1922. The selection of exhibits on display here — only a part of the museum’s rich collection — includes work by the leading players in Italian figurative art of the 20th century. These painters stood in contrast to the Tuscan Novecento group, who favoured the periodical Solaria and frequented the Giubbe Rosse café in the city’s main square. Florence in the 1920s was thus a major focal point for some of Italy’s most important artists and thinkers. In the postwar era the gallery continued to add to its collections through the acquisition of the award-winning works at the various editions of the Fiorino art fair, which were earmarked for the gallery by the rules governing the submission of works. These acquisitions, however, were also supplemented by a large number of donations, which continue even today to highlight the close ties between the gallery and the city.

GAM Pitti – © Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze, Gabinetto Fotografico

Arrival to Milan is planned around 8:00 PM.