The numbers concerning visitors to the city of Florence and those who go to museums are equally very many. The problem is that people are all attracted to the same places and the same works: I know, Botticelli's Venus, in the Uffizi or Michelangelo's David at the Accademia Gallery. The sixty-plus museums of Florence are full of treasures and therefore it is up to the shrewd tourist to go and find them, to enjoy a visit of the historical and artistic beauties without chaos.
One of these places is the National archeologic museum, which is located in Piazza Santissima Annunziata. The square is well known, there is the Spedale degli Innocenti with the famous colonnade surmounted by putti in glazed terracotta; the basilica is then adorned with frescoes by famous painters. The entrance to the Archaeological Museum opens on this same square, 4 euros admission (free for children under 18 and for over 65 as in all state-run museums in Florence and Italy). The ground floor is dedicated to exhibitions, there are always some, at this time for example and until July the exhibition is called The dawn of the Etruscan princes and comes from Cortona.
From the ground floor there is also access to the garden which deserves a separate mention: it hosts many plants and well-kept trees, from March to September it is in bloom, with a wonderful cycle of flowers: bulbs and fruit trees, forsythia, camellias , roses, hydrangeas. But since we are in an environment dedicated to archaeological study there are tombs that have been brought here from excavation sites. The garden can be visited every Saturday in the morning every half hour.
Going up, however, you immediately enter the world Etruscan with several wonderful works: the bronze of the Minerva of Arezzo, a proud warrior; the room where the Arringer and the Chimera of Arezzo, the monster with a lion's head, a snake's tail and a goat's head in the middle of the back. The room is dim and nobody was there when I visited it, which made it even more impressive.
Well, I'm not an archaeological expert and I let myself be guided a lot by the sensations, but I assure you that there is no shortage here, also because after another two / three Etruscan and Roman rooms you arrive at the Egyptian section. The Egyptian museum which is inside the Archaeological is second in importance to that of Turin but hardly anyone knows. It was Leopold III of Lorraine who financed expeditions to Egypt in the first half of the nineteenth century and since 1880 the Museum is where it is now, in the Palazzo della Crocetta. The Egyptian section for example is very popular with children, there are 5 very disturbing mummies in room VII and many sarcophagi. The most impressive because it is double is that of the nurse of the Pharaoh's daughter. Only the prominent people had the double sarcophagus. In this section you will also find vases, stems, statues, the famous canopes inside which the internal organs were kept, removed for the mummification process.
The third floor of the museum houses the section Greek with some kouroi, vases, bronzes and an unknown curiosity: a secret corridor that leads inside the church of the Santissima Annunziata. The Palazzo della Crocetta, in fact, was the house of Maria Maddalena dei Medici, sister of Cosimo II; the woman was "infirm of body" practically had a handicap it was preferred that she was not seen too much, so this passage to go to Mass represents a kind of "mini Vasari corridor".
You will not miss the Archaeological Museum on your next visit to Florence, I'm sure.
