FAI Days – space for the “Apprentice Cicerones®” | Hotel Bernini Palace

FAI Days – space for the “Apprentice Cicerones®”

23/03/2019 - 10:00 | 24/03/2019 - 19:00

A small journey, on March 23 and 24, to discover the historical and cultural heritage of the Florentine five-star hotel, in the company of the “Apprentice Cicerones®”. The hotel, long committed to promoting the local area, is proud to welcome visitors into its lobby—once a hat boutique—and into the Sala Parlamento, where Garibaldi, Cavour, and members of parliament once met during the period when Florence was the capital of Italy, between 1865 and 1870.

Guided tours of the Hotel Bernini Palace are reserved for FAI members.

Info and reservations

The Apprentice Cicerones® will guide small groups of FAI members to discover some of the most interesting aspects of the hotel. The Hotel Bernini Palace, like a book, contains many different, original and distinctive stories. As soon as you cross the threshold, you are welcomed by a “collection” of sculpted heads wearing eccentric hats: the lobby once used to be a hat boutique, and today it has been reinterpreted in a contemporary key, with refined furnishings and a play of light and shadow. Also overlooking the lobby is the Lounge Bar, a sort of stage framed by long rows of fine bottles acting as wings.

But the most characteristic area is on the first floor: the Sala Parlamento. In the years when the hotel was known as Hotel Columbia Parlamento—between 1865 and 1870, when Florence briefly became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy—this space served as the refreshment room for deputies and senators. Visitors will be able to admire the painted roundels along the walls, depicting key figures of the Italian Risorgimento: Garibaldi, Cavour, Gioberti, Balbo, Lamarmora, Daniele Manin, and many others. Today, it serves as the breakfast room. The Apprentice Cicerones® will open a window onto that era, when the entire city was in the spotlight and bore witness to some of the most extraordinary chapters of national history.