The Medici Library

At the top of the staircase, a large portal introduces the vast reading room, one of the few sixteenth-century rooms in the world to have remained almost intact: here everything is original, with a linden wood ceiling carved by Giovan Battista del Tasso, based on Michelangelo’s drawings. , to the splendid stained glass windows with the Medici coats of arms designed by Giorgio Vasari, to finish with the beautiful red and white terracotta floor designed by Niccolò Tribolo, a pupil of Buonarroti. The same wooden benches, called plutei, which run in two parallel rows on the sides of the room, were made following the drawings of Michelangelo. They had the dual function of lectern and custody: the codes were stored horizontally in the lower shelves and were freely consultable secured to the counter by means of chains.