The Innocenti Museum

The Museum also devotes ample space to temporary exhibitions and cultural events, edited by the Institute or in collaboration with other organisations. The offer is inspired above all by themes dear to the institution and its values, with reflections on childhood and adolescence, families and parenthood. The exhibitions are housed in recently renovated spaces, fully accessible and equipped with every comfort for the visit.

Through the Museum, the Institute undertakes to enhance its cultural services (Museum, Archive and Library) in an integrated way with proposals aimed at promoting and transmitting the inexhaustible vitality of this cultural heritage.

2022 saw the birth of the exhibition “And the other half I shall keep. Identifying Tokens of the Ospedale degli Innocenti”(03.11.2022-31.01.2023), an exhibition offer dedicated to tokens, those small objects traditionally worn by children upon their arrival in the historic orphanage that used to identify them and of which the Historical Archive still preserves over forty thousand specimens. An exhibition that also intends to dialogue with children, accompanying them on the discovery of this rare heritage with a narrative designed for children through the illustrated story "The broken coin. A story of Tino il Nocentino" and the videoinspired by it.

The exhibition is extended until May 9, 2023

The Museum's exhibition offer is always updated on the Museum's website.

The Gallery of Frescoes, which since 1971 has housed a significant collection of detached frescoes deposited at the Istituto degli Innocenti by the Florentine Galleries (now the Uffizi Galleries), was inaugurated on 20 May 2025, and has been open to the public since 22 May 2025.

The goal of the redevelopment project was to showcase these fine spaces within this historic Florentine institution by reconnecting them to the existing museum itinerary, of which they form an ideal continuation and culmination, while also improving accessibility and enjoyment of the works of art kept there for people with disabilities.

The visitor route includes the Gallery with its frescoes, the two Prior’s Rooms intended to host cultural activities or small temporary exhibitions, and the small Chapel featuring a fresco overlooking the Church, which may host monographic exhibitions or other special activities.

Presented in August 2023, the redevelopment project received funding amounting to €498,603.20 under the Ministry of Culture’s NRRP M1C3-3 / Investment 1.2 programme for the “Removal of physical and Cognitive Barriers in Public Museums and Cultural Sites not Belonging to the Ministry”. Together with the Istituto’s own resources, the project has made the new spaces fully accessible and usable, and has also enabled the implementation of measures to showcase the works of art housed within. The redevelopment was geared towards removing not only architectural barriers but also cognitive ones.

A total of 28 works are preserved in the Gallery: 27 detached sinopias and frescoes in storage and the Dispute of St Catherine of Alexandria with Philosophers by Bernardino Poccetti owned by the Institute. Many of these works - dating from approximately the 13^th to the 18^th century - had previously been kept in the Cenacle of San Salvatore in the Church of Ognissanti. Following the Florence Flood of 1966, they were restored and entrusted to the Istituto degli Innocenti, coinciding with the relocation and reorganisation of the Innocenti Museum on the first floor. These works of art have now become an integral part of the Museum.

Anyone wishing to use or acquire images and videos of the cultural heritage of the Institute and Museum for reproduction purposes is required to formalize an application and send it to the competent office using the completed request form. The concession and the terms for the use of the materials are subject to the Regulations of the Istituto degli Innocenti.