The Museum of "Nature morte", ie"Still Life" paintings, is housed inside the famous Villa Medicea.
As can be seen by anyone who visits the monumental Villa's apartments, the memory of the Medici's ruling house is entrusted above all to architecture, then to the splendid central hall frescoed by Giorgio Vasari, while the original furnishings of the Medici age have long since disappeared. As for the current furniture, it is mostly witness of the Napoleonic period (1809-1814), and also of the period in which the capital of the newborn Kingdom of Italy (after Turin and before Rome) is located in Florence (1865-1870), so the villa is used by King Vittorio Emanuele II as a hunting lodge or for meetings with the Countess of Mirafiori, the king's "morganatic" wife.
Instead the rooms, located on the upper floors, where now the Still Life Museum is located, have remained under-utilized until 2007, when many dozens of paintings from the museums of Florence have been placed here, to constitute an original, specialized collection.
In fact this museum, even for those who have some knowledge of the main art collections in Europe, is a pleasant surprise. It isn't the result of a fictive juxtaposition of different works, having as common subject the "Still life"; it's a collection of homogeneous works (often enclosed within precious frames), largely originating from the patronage of the Medici family.
So this collection allows us to appreciate the number, the different homeland, and the quality of the artists who produced their works for the ruling family.
Furthermore, the collection allows us to evaluate how the border between art and science is labile in this case. In fact, especially the Florentine painter Bartolomeo Bimbi (1648-1729), present with almost sixty paintings, has carefully documented the cultivars of citrus, apples and other fruits, which were cultivated at his time in the region, and which today are largely extinct. The demonstration is the more effective, since in some cases these cultivars (many tens) are numbered and named in a list painted on the lower part of the canvas.
All this, and more, is the subject of the guided tour (free) that is held every hour by competent and effective staff, according to a timetable published on the official Museum's website (different timetable from that of the monumental apartments).
Basically, this is an absolutely must-see attraction.