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 ...