Some signatures are worth more than an army. On 31 October 1737, in a Florence closing the brightest chapter of its history, a woman put hers to a document destined to change the city's face forever. Her name was Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, and she was the last of her dynasty.
The end of a dynasty
With the death of her brother Gian Gastone in 1737, the House of Medici — which for three centuries had made Florence the European capital of art — came to an end. The Grand Duchy passed to the Habsburg-Lorraine, and with it came the real risk that the immense heritage accumulated by the family would be broken up, sold, taken elsewhere.
It had happened at other courts in Europe: entire collections scattered, masterpieces moved to the capitals of the new rulers. Florence could have lost, in a few years, what it had built over centuries.
“For the ornament of the State, for the benefit of the Public and to attract the curiosity of Foreigners.”
The Family Pact
Anna Maria Luisa chose another path. With the Convention that went down in history as the “Family Pact”, signed on 31 October 1737 with the new Grand Duke, the Electress Palatine donated to the State of Tuscany the entire artistic heritage of the Medici: paintings, sculptures, jewels, books, furnishings. On one single, far-sighted condition: that nothing could ever be removed from the capital.
It was a revolutionary bond. In an age when art was the private property of the powerful, Anna Maria Luisa effectively turned it into a common good, tying it forever to the city and to those who would visit it in the centuries to come.
A legacy you can still walk through
It is thanks to that signature that today we can walk through the halls of the Uffizi, climb the grand staircase of Palazzo Pitti, admire in Florence's churches and museums works that elsewhere would have been scattered. The last of the Medici left no blood heirs: she left all of us the most beautiful city in the world.
From this date, and from this gesture, our hotel's name was born. 31.10 is not a number: it is the memory of an act of love for Florence, and the promise to preserve — in our own small way — the same devotion to beauty. We dedicated one of our themed rooms to Anna Maria Luisa.
