The Bargello, dating from 1255, is one of the oldest buildings in Florence.
It was originally the headquarters of the Podestà. and in the 16th c., acquired the name by which we know it,
the Bargello, or headquarters of the police.

The Bargello was the site of numerous imprisonments and executions,
the most famous being the perpertrators of the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici on Easter Sunday 1478,
when Lorenzo (the Magnificent) di Medici, and his brother Giuliano were attacked in the Duomo during Easter Mass,
and Guiliano was stabbed to death .
The perpetrators of this incident were executed and their portraits painted on an outside wall of the Bargello by Botticelli.
The paintings were destroyed in 1494 after the expulsion of the Medici from Florence.

OVer the centuries, the Bargello was subjected to a series of alterations and additions,
but the courtyard, balcony and the large hall on the first floor have been preserved.

Since the 19th c. the building has been used as the National Museum, where it houses works by
Donatello, Verrocchio, Michelangelo, Cellini, the competition panels by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti,
for the gilded bronze East Doors of the Baptistery,
as well as Bernini's fine marble portrait of his beloved, Costanza Bonarelli,
and a large collection of della Robbia ceramics and other "minor arts".

This image shows the beautiful courtyard of the Bargello, with its open staircase leading to the galleries on the
second floor, housing works by the artists named above, exhibited in a building of the same Renaissance time period
when their works were created.

The Bargello is a "not to be missed" opportunity to see the "finest of the finest" in Florentine sculpture.