Florence for Families: Medieval and Renaissance Daily Life

PRIVATE GUIDED TOUR OF FLORENCE FOR FAMILIES

This entertaining tour is designed for the intellectually adventurous traveller and tailor-made to be family-friendly. It makes it possible for kids and young people to encounter the beauty of ancient art by means of a kind of “time machine”: they enjoy a first-hand taste of what daily life in a noble Florentine household was like between the 14th and the end of the 16th Centuries.

We start our visit from one of the most better preserved Renaissance palaces in town, Palazzo Strozzi. The imposing structure suggests the wealth of the family who owned the Palace, the Strozzi, rich merchants, at times competitors to the Medici family. We visit the beautiful square courtyard , in pure classical style, around which the structure develops, and there we will explain the opulent life of wealthy people during the Renaissance period. The comparison with Palazzo Davanzati, our next stop, will make your children understand how two historical periods, Middle Age and Renaissance, can be reflected in the structure of buildings.

This walk is an excellent way for families to build a base knowledge that will accompany them on their further explorations of the city.
Florence is filled with fun, intriguing places for families to explore; we will visit these, and many other, public and private spaces which illustrate everyday life during the Renaissance and provide interesting ways for children to draw parallels with their lives today.

Piazza della Signoria, heart of the city, is like a open-air museum, the statues exposed there, will give your children the possibility to enjoy tales of mithology!

Next is a stop in one of the best ice-cream places in town – sure to be a success!

The visit of Florence will be really memorable for your kids, if they experience a couple of workshops.
Depending on their age and interests we can choose the best suitable for them.

In the workshop producing Florentine hand-decorated paper, kids are shown the historic process of “marbleizing” paper. This process was probably created in China or Japan, introduced in Europe in the late 1500. Children will be amazed at how from a few drops of colour, so many different patterns can be created, and….. more than that, they will be involved in creating a personal sheet of paper!

The other workshop we visit, is the one producing Florentine Mosaic, this ancient tradition started in Florence at the end of the 16th century, sponsored by Ferdinand I of the Medici. This kind of unique art is carried on, still today, in a few workshop in Florence: you will be amazed by the technique of cutting marbles and semi-precious stones, in order to create subjects like landscapes, fruits, flowers.
The combination of the many hues that nature offers through the different stones brought this kind of artistic production, to be called as “ a painting of stones”.

Our tour will finish in one of the “must see” of Florence: the Academy.
Any visitor to Florence will want to see the statue of David, symbol of the Florentine Renaissance, and your kids will be astonished by his size and his anatomical beauty. We broaden our study of Michelangelo's masterpieces and follow his career in Florence, under the Medici family, and his time in Rome, where he endured a difficult relationship with Pope Julius II, by taking in his significant unfinished works, the ”Prisoners” and the touching “Pietà”. We focus on Michelangelo’s “unfinished technique” which changed the approach of many artists towards their craft forever.