The main hall of the piano nobile is a key axis in Ammannati’s architectural project for the Ramírez de Montalvo palace in Florence and
its status is entrusted to its wooden celiling, as well as to its monumental hearth and its spatial organisation. This architectural setting is
also key to the palace project of the Spanish courtier and for his protector Duke Cosimo I’s strategy to
fl
aunt the social position of his most
loyal collaborators in the new order of the Principato. Through the further exploration of the design and construction of the ‘palcho della
sala’ of the Palace of Antonio Ramírez de Montalvo this study focuses on inherent features of the architecture of the Florentine secondo
Cinquecento: from the complex relationship between architecture and politics based on the role played by Cosimo I and other court
clients, to the more technological matters concerning the organisation of the work-site or – regarding speci
fi
cally the issue of the sof
fi
tto
ligneo – the work of Bartolomeo Ammannati and Giorgio Vasari and their
fi
gurative and technical models for this project in relation to
the architecture of the time
