Once inside, although they are in hurry, he could not avoid stopping o admire the beautiful Italian garden created in 1550 just behind Palazzo Pitti, the house of Medici, Lorraine, and royal families. Professor Langdon decides to cross the Boboli Gardens thinking to confuse themselves with the crowd of tourists could be a good idea, but he soon realizes that is not so easy. Boboli Gardens and the Grotta del Buontalenti Porta Romana is also a starting point to reach Piazzale Michelangelo and its amazing lookout taking the lovely tree-lined avenue of Viale Machiavelli. Being a school it is not possible to visit the entire building but you can visit, by reservation, the Gipsoteca, a collection of more than three thousand plaster casts of important pieces of art from Florence and Italy made by Michelangelo and other Masters of sculpture.

It was built at the end of 1800 when Florence was the capital of Italy, and not commissioned by Medici as Dan Brown says. The Lyceum of Art is the yellow building at the end of the green oak tree garden on the right of Porta Romana. Simply use the secondary entrance, which usually has no line compared to the main gate at Palazzo Pitti. If you want to enter the Giardino, do not climb over the wall of the Lyceum of Art as Professor did. On its right side, you find the outer perimeter of Boboli Gardens. Today is one of the best-preserved gates of the city, and you still can admire its huge iron door and a slab with the Medici Coat of Arms.

Porta Romana, built in 1300, was part of the fortified walls that surrounded the city. Being impossible to enter the old town from the other bridges, Langdon and Sienna reach the medieval gate in the Oltrarno district to find a free way of access. The first step of Dan Brown’s Inferno self-guided tour is Porta Romana. The Medieval Gate of Porta Romana and the Lyceum of Art

The church and the annexed Cloister of the Oranges are open to the public on Mondays in the afternoon between 3 and 6 pm. In fact, it was the place where Boccaccio read to the public Dante’s Divina Commedia for the first time. It has importance not only as a place of worship but also from a cultural point of view. It has been rotated 90 degrees over the years, and today the entrance is from Via del Proconsolo, 11. One of the most fascinating details of the church is its layout. That is why he is buried here and why he was declared the Patron of the abbey. The Marquis contributed to the splendor of the Badia with important donations. It is the oldest and most renowned abbey of Florence, being founded in 978 by Willa, mother of the Marquis Ugo di Toscana, as a Benedictine monastery. Badia Fiorentina – Photo Credits: Shirley de Jong

Brown inferno