Situated near the hub of tourism in Via Lungarno Serristori 1/3, almost in front of the very famous Uffizi Gallery, Rodolfo Siviero’ house isn’t very popular among tourists. However, as soon as they enter the building, they fall in love with the palace. I decided to talk about this house, because I wanted to visit something new, that I hadn’t the opportunity to see before and that was out of the main tourist routes, in order to avoid the common queues that you always find at the entrance of the main attractions of Florence during summer.
When you enter this building, you have immediately the impression of being inside somebody’s house: the art objects are exposed in an assemblage of order and disorder, and also the furniture reflects the eclectic taste of the landlord. In fact, the building is the portrait of its owner: born in 1911, Rodolfo Siviero donated his entire colection to Regione Toscana when he died in 1983. Inside this house-museum you’ll have the possibility to see the most various artistic techniques and also several masterpieces. Room after room, you’ll be attracted by an incredible variety and diversity of artworks.
Enthusiast collectionist and learned scholar, Rodolfo Siviero was able to gather a wide collection of ancient artworks and also Italian masterpieces realised by artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Giacomo Manzù and Ardengo Soffici, in some cases people he personally knew. Rodolfo Siviero was a very charming person and it’s easy to imagine him as if he were the character of a novel. In fact Siviero, during the World War II and also after it, followed his passion for the history of art: he started to work as an art critic then, not being succesful, he took a more adventurous job, he became a of hunter of lost artworks confiscated by the nazists.
Inside the House-Museum there’s also a specialized library, donated to Regione Toscana after his death. Nowadays it is possible to visit just the ground floor of the house, where there’s also a garden used for film screenings, tematic readings and several other activities.
The house can be visited indipendently thanks to information leaflets located in every room that explain what you can see in each room or you can decide to book a guided tour, available only during some periods of the year. Usually the visit lasts less than half an hour, but even in this short time you can experience a journey between the past and the present that you can’t forget.
I’m sure I want to go back to admire this house-museum, and I’d like to do it with an expert guide or after having more information about it. I think that a collection like this, so strongly characterized by its owner and creator, can be visited in two different ways. The first one, more emotional, because when you get through the door of this palace, you enter in a timeless atmosphere, where the house talks about itself through the objects. The second one, with an educational approach, stopping to admire every object inside the house to recall the different periods in the history of art they represent
Copyright photo 1: http://www.gonews.it
Copyright photo 2: www.firenze-online.com
