A Guide to Mona Lisa’s Florence

Florence’s most famous daughter is virtually invisible in her own hometown. No plaques commemorate where she lived; no monuments or streets bear her name. But after years of researching the life of this Renaissance Everywoman, I now see Mona Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo wherever I go in Florence—but especially in the places marked on the map and shown in the photos below.

The photos below correlate to the numbers on the map. Click the first photo to read the captions and scroll through.