Palazzo Rucellai bathed in sunlight. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Niko pointed me upstairs, where I discovered a different story—a quirky assemblage of the magnificent and the misfit.

The façade of the Palazzo Rucellai is essential to any story of the Italian Renaissance. It was designed in the mid-15th century by Leon Battista Alberti, who, together with Filippo Brunelleschi ...

The kings of 15th-century Florence banking, and Botticelli's most generous sponsors, were the Medicis. You could spend days looking at art and buildings paid for by the Medicis alone.