Palazzo Medici Riccardi Museum

     Before I even entered the building of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi Museum, I first noticed that there were several small holes throughout the ground floor of the structure.  I wondered what they were (I had actually seen these small portals on various Renaissance-style buildings throughout the city center of Florence)... So, when I went in, I asked one of the people who worked there what their significance was.  I was told that those holes were originally part of the building so that whenever a rich family (i.e., the Medici family) were to have leftovers from dinner, often times the leftovers would be put through these holes for the poor people / beggars, who were constantly in search of food.  Additionally, whenever the family sold wine, these little portals were useful to sell bottles of wine after normal selling hours!
      I found that interesting.  Once I was inside, most of the rooms that comprised this palace were exactly what I had imagined - pristine.  With the ornately painted ceilings and marble floors, it reminded me of many of the other prominent Florentine buildings... the Duomo, the Baptistry, many museums... and it was even similar to the ceilings / floors / walls that can be found in the Vaticanm museum!  One thing that I have repeatedly noticed is the focus on the heavens- for such elaborate ceilings have you constantly looking upwards!
    The Chapel of the Magi was equally as ornate - we had learned about some of the frescoes that adorn the chapel's walls in Art History... and the chapel was surprisingly much smaller and much more intimate than I expected!
     The courtyard outside reminded me very much of the courtyard found outside of (to the right of) Santa Croce, with its classical, symmetrical style. I am not at all surprised that the Medici palace looked the way it did - it makes sense that their own dwelling place and its art would closely resemble the art that we see throughout Florence- as it, for the most part, had been commissioned by their family! It must be nice....