Palazzo Strozzi

Palazzo Strozzi was the champion of Florence’s millionaire palaces, a rusticated stone cube of such fearful dimensions that it squats in its own piazza just up from Via de’ Tornabuoni like the inscrutable monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, radiating waves of megalomania. It was begun by Benedetto da Maiano in 1489 for the extraordinarily wealthy Filippo Strozzi, head of one of Florence’s greatest banking clans and adviser to Lorenzo il Magnifico.

When he died in 1491, the façade facing Piazza Strozzi was almost complete, but future generations had neither the money nor the interest to finish the massive cornice. And one wonders whether his son, also called Filippo, ever took much pleasure in it; although at first a Medici ally like his father and wed to Piero de’ Medici’s daughter, Filippo later led a band of anti-Medici exiles against Florence.