How one small city taught Europe to see the world in a new way.
Around 1400, rich bankers in Florence began to pay artists to try something new. They looked again at ancient Rome, studied the human body and learned the rules of perspective. Within a hundred years the new ideas had spread to Rome, Milan and the rest of Europe.
Renaissance means rebirth. People in Florence felt they were bringing the art of ancient Greece and Rome back to life. Money made it possible. The Medici family were bankers, and they spent a fortune on churches, palaces and paintings. Artists competed hard and learned from each other. Brunelleschi solved the problem of the giant cathedral dome. Botticelli painted gods from old myths. Leonardo filled notebooks with machines, plants and the human body. Michelangelo carved David from a block of marble that other sculptors had given up on. Then the popes called the best artists to Rome. Raphael and Michelangelo worked a short walk apart in the Vatican. In every room, look for three things: real faces, real feelings and real space.
Pick a colour to follow one story. Every moment shows where you can still see it.
Florence asks artists to make a test panel for new doors of the Baptistery. Young Lorenzo Ghiberti beats Filippo Brunelleschi.
See it at: Museo Nazionale del BargelloThe banker Cosimo de' Medici comes back from exile. From now on his family runs Florence, mostly from behind the scenes.
See it at: Palazzo Medici RiccardiBrunelleschi finishes the huge dome of the cathedral. He uses clever brick patterns and lifting machines he invented himself.
See it at: Florence CathedralBotticelli paints the goddess Venus arriving on a shell. It is one of the first big paintings of an ancient myth instead of a Bible story.
See it at: Uffizi GalleriesIn Milan, Leonardo starts painting the Last Supper on the wall of a monks' dining hall. He tries a new technique, and the paint soon starts to flake.
See it at: Santa Maria delle GrazieThe preacher Savonarola tells the people of Florence to burn mirrors, playing cards and luxury goods. A year later he is executed in the same square.
See it at: Museo di San MarcoMichelangelo's David, more than four metres tall, is placed in front of the town hall as a symbol of the city.
See it at: Galleria dell’Accademia di FirenzePope Julius II puts Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling and Raphael on the rooms of his own apartment, a short walk away.
See it at: Vatican MuseumsRaphael dies in Rome at 37. As he wished, he is buried in the Pantheon, an ancient Roman temple.
See it at: PantheonSoldiers of Emperor Charles V attack and loot Rome. The pope escapes along a passage on top of a wall to the fortress of Castel Sant'Angelo.
See it at: Castel Sant'AngeloThe museums and places where this story comes alive.
Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo's Annunciation and Michelangelo's round Doni Tondo, all in one building. Giorgio Vasari designed it as offices for the Medici: uffizi means offices.
Come for David and stay for the Prisoners: unfinished statues that seem to fight their way out of the stone. Here you can see how Michelangelo worked.
A former prison and police headquarters, now full of Renaissance sculpture. See Donatello's bronze David and the two test panels from the 1401 contest, side by side.
The family tombs of the Medici. In the New Sacristy, Michelangelo carved Night, Day, Dawn and Dusk, lying on the tombs as if they were tired.
Milan's big painting gallery. Look for Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin and Mantegna's Dead Christ, painted from the feet up, as if you stand right at the end of the stone slab.
A villa built to show off a cardinal's collection. Raphael's Deposition hangs here, close to later stars like Bernini and Caravaggio.
In 1504 it was placed outside Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of Florence. It moved to the Accademia in 1873.
Uffizi means offices: Vasari designed the building for the Medici government.
Lorenzo Ghiberti won, and Brunelleschi became famous as an architect instead.