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Hotel Bavaria is located on the second and third floor of the sixteenth-century
building named Palazzo Ramirez-Montalvo. This
late Renaissance palace, built
around 1568, is attribuited to the Medici family's
architect and sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati, whereas
the ornamental graffito decorations on
the facade are reported to be drawn by Giorgio
Vasari on the iconographic project of Vincenzo
Borghini and were executed by the Vasari apprentices
in collaboration with Bernardino Barbatelli known
as "il Poccetti".
The
drawings were intended to celebrate the life of the Spanish nobleman
Don Antonio Ramirez de Montalvo and his tribute to the Medici family,
whose six-balls heraldry can be seen on the facade.
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Descendant of an
ancient noble dynasty from Arévalo del Rey in Avila Province, and son
of Don Juan Ramirez de Montalvo, who served on the Spanish kings'
court, Don Antonio, probably born not long after 1500, was a member of
the retinue of Eleonora de Toledo, daughter of Pedro de Toledo, Viceroy
of the Kingdom of Naples for Emperor Charles V, who married Cosimo I
dei Medici , granduke of Tuscany, in 1539.
Don Antonio Ramirez de
Montalvo was made chamberlain of the court at Palazzo Pitti, a role of
great honour and considerable political importance.
The palace belonged
to the Ramirez Montalvo family for the next three centuries up to the
last descendant the marquess Giulia de Montalvo, a passionate patriot
supporting the democratic principles of the Italian Risorgimento. Her
two sons, Francesco and Ferdinando Matteucci, inherited the palace,
which was sold then and split into the present structure which consists
of our hotel, the famous "Casa d'aste Pandolfini" and some dwelling
houses.
Throughout its history Palazzo Ramirez-Montalvo has been rented
only twice: the former to the Catholic prelate Annibale Bentivoglio in
1645, the latter one century later to baron Philipp Stosch, a notorious
English government spy in the disguise of an art collector.
Noteworthy
the short stay, between 1758 and 1759, of the German archeologist Johan
Joachin Winkelmann in order to value the baron Stosch's art
collection. |
