So there I was at the end of 2020, scratching my head about why I had taken this photograph in late 2016. At first I thought this may have been the entrance to our rental apartment building (which is certainly a place worth remembering), but the time didn't fit. The shots before and after were only minutes apart, and taken in the Piazza di Santa Croce. That's a hike from our apartment, so that couldn't have been it.

They are certainly solid, well-made Tuscan antique doors, but that didn't seem to be enough to justify photographing those doors in particular.

A little bit more digging revealed these doors to be from the Palazzo Antellesi in Firenze. Had I walked back a little bit and take in the entire building in, I would have noticed the presence of frescoes across the front of it.

So what is this place? It contains rental apartments. From the website, extremely beautiful rental apartments, and ones which have a significant history. At the time this building was built, Piazza Santa Croce was on the periphery of the then town. The Piazza is dominated by its basilica, construction of which began in 1294. (Though it wasn't finished until 1865.)

The website claims that the Palazzo Antellesi is the second most prominent monument on the Piazza with foundations dating back to Roman times. The building as it is today came about in the early 1600s when it was created as the residence for the Antellesi family, bankers to the Medici. (Who, interestingly enough, made the greatest part of their wealth as bankers themselves.)

The frescoes that I referred to earlier, and which I sadly do not have photos of, celebrate the Medici reign. In the mid-1950s the building was bought by the Piccolominis, one of Italy's most historic families, who are (the web site claims), descendants of two Popes, Pius II and Pius III. (I suspect that they mean "related to". Although popes having children was far more common then than now, I can find no evidence that that either of the Piuses had any.) Pius II's real name was Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini, and according to Wikipedia, Pius III (real name Francesco Todeschini) "was the nephew of Pope Pius II, who granted him the use of the family name "Piccolomini", and appointed the twenty-one-year old Francesco as Archbishop of Siena". Ah, promotion on merit. You can't beat it. Not that it ultimately did him much good since he was elected Pope on 22 September 1503, was ordained as a priest on 30 September 1503 (yes, the career path for popes was more flexible back then), and died on 18 October 1503. He was ill for most of the time in between. It was therefore not the most memorable of papacies.

In any case, the family restored this building, and in doing so created 10 luxury apartments for rent.

This would be an awesome place to stay, and it may well be that I was at least vaguely aware of it at the time. That may have inspired me to take the photo as a reminder to check out the building for our following trip. (Though as it turned out, we didn't stay a single night in Firenze in 2019; we simply made a whistle-stop over the course of lunchtime.)

So what's with the image title? I note that the only way to get a price on any of the apartments is to contact the owners. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a reason for that. I think this may well be a case of "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".

It would have been nice, however.