23 The Costume Gallery at the Pitti Palace

DUCHESS ELEONORA DI TOLEDO DE’ Medici got fed up living in the gloomy Palazzo Vecchio. So in 1549, with her own money, she bought a palace on the other side of the Arno that the Pitti family had up for sale. What with her eight kids and failing health (hubby Duke Cosimo I had given her syphilis), Eleonora wanted someplace away from the city racket where she could have a garden. The choice was connected to her past: she’d been born in sunny Spain and grew up around lush gardens in Naples, the daughter of the city’s Viceroy.

She was so raring to relocate she even moved in while renovations were going on, with architect Vasari doubling the palace in size. Right off the bat, she hired a landscaper for the backyard, which today we know as the Boboli Gardens.

Now the Pitti Palace Eleonora bought is home to six museums and those beautiful gardens. It’s all too much for one visit, so I say go to the Costume Gallery for a change of scene from painting and sculpture. It’s an absolutely glam place, the only museum in Italy dedicated to fashion design and is relatively new to the Pitti, opened in 1983.

You’ll find it in the Palazzina della Meridiana, that was added to the palace and completed in 1858. Luscious chandeliers, gold-framed mirrors, and brocade walls decorate room after room (eighteen in all), that take you through 300 years of Italian fashion.

Displays rotate every two to three years, as the collection is vast. A memorable visit for me was an exhibit that began with eighteenth-century Marie Antoinette styles—impossibly wide skirts of richly textured fabrics. There were fantastic silk Neapolitan wedding dresses, satin bustled ensembles worn by contessas in the nineteenth century, beaded Italian flapper wear from the 1920s.

But what I most adored were the post-World War II fashions, where Italian designers broke loose and the styles were outrageously chic—from scrumptious 1950s cocktail dresses to sparkling gowns by Florentine designer Cesare Fabbri, and choice vintage pieces from revered fashion artists like Valentino, Gianfranco Ferre, and Maurizio Galante. It’s fun to imagine Italian women out and about flaunting these threads. Many came from the closet of an eccentric Bologna department store heiress, Cecilia Matteucci Lavarini, who’s world famous for collecting couture and has sent some of her overflow to the museum.

The last room of the exhibit honors Eleonora. The dress she was buried in is displayed there. It’s in tatters, spread out in a glass case, but you still can get an idea of the style of this fabulous woman, who kept a staff of ten weavers working full time to create her elegant getups.

Eleonora married Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1539, when she was seventeen and he was just a year older. The Medici rep was at a low point, so it was a coup for them to have this beautiful woman descended from Castilian royalty added to their mix. Eleonora became a beloved first lady, winning the Florentines over with her generous patronage of artists and the peasantry. The marriage worked out: she put up with Cosimo’s notorious mood swings, he put up with her penchant for gambling. He even named her regent when he’d take trips away from Florence, which was a most unusual position for a woman of those days.

Most importantly, Eleonora popped out heirs, bearing eleven children in their first fourteen years of marriage, five of them male. This was tough on her five-foot-tall body. By the time she was forty, she was emaciated, there were hairline fractures on her pelvis from the child-birthing, and her bones were deteriorating from the syphilis. She took a trip with her son Garzia to see her older son Giovanni in Pisa, even though he’d warned them there was a malaria outbreak. One by one, first Garzia, then Giovanni, then Eleonora succumbed to the disease and died. From the looks of the dress, her funeral must have been grand.

Right down the steps from the gallery is the wondrous expanse of the Boboli Gardens. In the warmer months, you can stroll paths bordered by lemon trees and blooming flowerbeds, just as Eleonora did.

Pitti Palace: Houses the Palatine Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Porcelein Museum, Boboli Gardens, and the Costume Gallery. Costume Gallery open daily 8:15-4:30 or -6:30, depending on the season. Closed first and last Mondays of the month. (www.polomuseale.firenze.it)

Golden Day: Enjoy wandering around the Costume Gallery and Boboli Gardens, linger in the Oltrarno with lunch nearby at Ristorante Ricchi (Piazza Santo Spirito 8/r, 055 215 864), where you can sit outside and enjoy the view of Santo Spirito, with specialties such as pappardelle al ragu di cinghiale (pasta with wild boar tomato sauce).

TIP: Your entrance to the Costume Gallery also includes admission to the nearby Giardini Bardini (www.bardinipeyron.it), which can be reached through the Boboli Gardens. So if it’s a beautiful day, especially in springtime, include a stop at these quieter gardens and enjoy lovely views of Florence.