The Museo degli Innocenti is part of the Istituto degli Innocenti, the large monumental complex designed by Filippo Brunelleschi to protect the rights of children and adolescents.
The Museum encompasses all the history and activity carried out to help abandoned children. An interweaving of art, history and architecture that links the past to the present as the Institute still continues its centuries-old activity of training, hospitality and research.
Museum of the Innocents: Tour with Expert Guide
The Museum offers three thematic tour itineraries: artistic, architectural and historical.
Artistic itinerary
Located on the third floor, the itinerary offers visitors works of art deeply linked to the vicissitudes of the Institution and purchased thanks to donations and the help of other welfare institutions. A large trussed roof covers the gallery of the Museum, built between 1436 and 1438. Inside there are important masterpieces by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Luca and Andrea della Robbia, Sandro Botticelli and artists who grew up within the Institution, such as Vincenzo Ulivieri and Francesco Morandini.
Architectural itinerary
Located on the ground floor, the route shows the entire monumental complex. From the external portico to the men’s courtyard and then to the women’s courtyard to retrace the places where the “nocentini” lived. Places that, even today, are frequented by children through educational services offered by the Institute.
Historical itinerary
Located in the basement, the itinerary begins with the exhibition rooms where the history of the Hospital is narrated through artifacts, artistic works and portraits of illustrious personalities who contributed to the foundation of the Institute. Works in which boys and girls of various ages are portrayed in their daily activities. Suggestive is the terracotta Nativity scene in which the newborns left at the Hospital are lying between Joseph and Mary, symbolically taking the place of the Child Jesus.
Even more evocative is the Signals room in which 140 pull-out drawers contain small objects of recognition that were hidden among the swaddling clothes of the newborns at the time of abandonment: these are mainly objects divided in two, one half left with the newborn and the other kept by the mother. This would have facilitated recognition through the reunion of the two halves in case the family could one day take back their child.
Within the historical path, moreover, there is the Archive of the Innocents in which the memory of the Institute is safeguarded through an impressive documentation on the children, the wet nurses and the life of this great community.
The Florencefoanyone guided tour includes a visit to all 3 itineraries described.
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