The Bargello

Before you stands the oldest public palace in Florence. Today it holds sculptures by Donatello and Michelangelo, but for centuries it was a dreaded place: people were tried, jailed and executed here.

1From people's palace to prison

It was begun in 1255 as the seat of the Capitano del Popolo and later of the Podestà, the magistrate who dispensed justice, usually an outsider so that he would be impartial. In 1574 it became the residence of the Bargello, the chief of police, and a prison. That is where its name comes from. Those condemned to death spent their last hours in the chapel before heading out to the scaffold.

2Hanged men on the facade

Florence had a chilling custom: painting traitors on public walls, sometimes hanging upside down, to cover them in disgrace. According to Vasari, Andrea del Castagno painted the hanged Albizzi rebels here in 1440, and from then on he was known as 'Andrea of the Hanged Men'.

On 29 December 1479, Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, one of Giuliano de' Medici's killers in the Pazzi conspiracy, was hanged from a window of this palace.

He had fled as far as Constantinople, but the sultan handed him over. A young Leonardo da Vinci sketched his hanging body and coolly noted the colours of his clothes. The drawing is now in Bayonne, in France.

In 1786 Grand Duke Peter Leopold abolished the death penalty in Tuscany, one of the first states in the world to do so. In 1865 the palace became a museum.

3What to look for

• The high windows of the facade, where the executions took place.
• The Volognana tower, which was also a prison.
• The iron rings on the outer walls.