Medici Hall of Maps

The second floor of Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's most important civic palace, is home to a real gem. A room designed by the incomparable Giorgio Vasari containing 54 hand-painted Renaissance maps by Egnazio Danti and Stefano Buonsignori, 237 portraits of Renaissance luminaries, and an enormous terrestrial globe (Mapa Mundi) that, in Danti's original design, began spinning at the slightest touch.