In the 16th century, Florentine craftsmen perfected the art of pietre dure, piecing together cut pieces of precious and semi-precious stones in an inlay process, and the Medici-founded institute devoted to the craft has been in this building since 1796. Long ago misnamed a "Florentine mosaic" by the tourism industry, this is a highly refined craft in which skilled artisans (artists, really) create scenes and boldly colored intricate designs in everything from cameos and tabletops to never-fade stone "paintings." Masters are adept at selecting, slicing, and polishing stones so that the natural grain or color gradations in the cross sections will, once cut and laid in the design, become the contours, shading, and molding that give good pietre dure scenes their depth and illusion of three-dimensionality. The collection in this museum is small, but the pieces are uniformly excellent. Souvenir shops all over town sell modern pietre dure items -- much of it mass-produced junk, but some very nice. The best contemporary maestro is Ilio de Filippis, whose workshop is called Pitti Mosaici.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Florence, Tuscany & Umbria, 6th Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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