What I find most interesting, as a Florentine, is that this story can still be followed on foot. The Duomo, the Palazzo dei Pazzi, the windows from which the conspirators were hanged: the sites of that day still exist, just a few minutes’ walk from each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this article, I’ll tell you how things happened, why it happened, and where you can see the places where it all happened today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Pazzi Conspiracy in brief<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The The Pazzi Conspiracy was a plot organized in 1478 to kill Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici<\/strong> <\/strong>and take control of Florence away from their family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To understand the significance of the event, it is important to make a preliminary remark. Florence at the time was formally a republic<\/strong>, but for more than forty years the Medici were the ones who decided everything<\/strong>. Lorenzo<\/strong>, which history will remember as the Magnificent<\/strong>, he was twenty-nine years old and ruled the city together with his younger brother Julian<\/strong>. <\/strong>They had no official titles: their power came from banks, alliances, and control of public offices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I Pazzi were the other great banking family of the city<\/strong>, o<\/strong>lder than the Medici, extremely wealthy, but cut off from political power. The conspiracy arose from this rivalry and found much higher ground: Pope Sixtus IV<\/strong>, who was at loggerheads with the Medici, and the Archbishop of Pisa Francesco Salviati<\/strong>. It was therefore not a feud between families, but a real attempted coup d’\u00e9tat, with troops ready to march on Florence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem was the opportunity. To succeed, the plan required eliminating both brothers together, at the same time: leaving one alive would give the Medici a leader to rally around. The solemn mass of April 26, 1478, in the Cathedral, was one of the few occasions when Lorenzo and Giuliano were side by side in a public place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It went badly halfway. Giuliano was killed with nineteen stab wounds<\/strong>. <\/strong>Lorenzo saved himself by taking refuge in the sacristy. And that failed half was enough to thwart the Pazzi’s attempt. The people, whom the conspirators had hoped to arouse, sided with the Medici. Within hours, those responsible were hanging from the windows of Palazzo Vecchio.<\/p>\n\n\n The conspiracy thus achieved the exact opposite of its objective: it was meant to end the Medici era in Florence and ended up consolidating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The short answer? Envy<\/strong>. <\/strong>The complete one is more interesting and detailed, because the conspiracy arises from a chain of precise insults<\/strong>, almost all tied to money<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first concerns a city that has little to do with Florence: Imola. In 1473, the Duke of Milan put it up for sale, and Pope Sixtus IV wanted to buy it for his nephew Girolamo Riario. The problem was that he didn’t have the money and borrowed it from the Medici bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lorenzo refused: Imola was strategically located for Florentine trade, and he had no intention of helping the Pope place one of his men there. Furthermore, he spread the word among other Florentine bankers so that no one would grant the loan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pazzi granted it. For them, it was a double opportunity: they were doing the Pope a favor and insulting their rivals. Sixtus IV thanked them by removing the Medici from management of the papal treasury, one of the most profitable businesses in Europe, and entrusting it to the Pazzi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then the two families have been at open war, even if no one calls it that yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lorenzo responded blow for blow. When the Pope appointed Francesco Salviati Archbishop of Pisa, a city under Florentine control, Lorenzo prevented him from taking office for three years. And in 1477, the heaviest blow came: an inheritance law, passed retroactively, stripping Giovanni de’ Pazzi of a huge fortune he had just inherited from his wife. A law tailor-made to halt the family’s rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On paper, the conspiracy bears the name of the Pazzi, but around the table sat very different people, each with their own unfinished business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The driving force behind everything was Francis de’ Pazzi<\/strong>, who ran the family bank in Rome and was the man closest to the Pope. He hated the Medici almost physically, and it was he who wove the network between Florence and Rome. The head of the family, Jacopo de’ Pazzi<\/strong>. <\/strong>He was made of a different cloth: old, very rich, and prudent, he initially considered the plan madness. He was convinced only when he realized that the Pope was actually behind it, and it was one of the worst decisions in the family’s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hidden director was in Rome: Jerome Riario<\/strong>, the nephew of Sixtus IV, the man for whom Imola had been bought. He knew that with Lorenzo alive his ambitions in Romagna would go nowhere. Beside him was Francesco Salviati<\/strong>, the archbishop of Pisa whom Lorenzo had kept away from his chair for three years: he was responsible for the political part of the plan, occupying Palazzo Vecchio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there were the hands. Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli<\/strong>, a debt-ridden banker with a troubled past, and Francesco de’ Pazzi himself took charge of Giuliano. Lorenzo was expected to be a professional, John the Baptist from Montesecco<\/strong>, soldier in the service of the Pope: it was he who refused to kill in church, and in his place two priests entered the scene, Antonio Maffei from Volterra<\/strong> <\/strong>and Stefano da Bagnone<\/strong>. <\/strong>Replacing an experienced soldier with two improvised hitmen was the mistake that saved Lorenzo’s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Above all, two figures who never touched a weapon. Sixtus IV<\/strong>, who gave his blessing to the enterprise without wanting – in words – its deaths. And Federico da Montefeltro<\/strong>, the Duke of Urbino celebrated as the model of a Renaissance prince: for centuries his role remained in the shadows, until a coded letter, deciphered by a historian in 2004, revealed that he had six hundred soldiers ready at the gates of Florence. The noblest face of the Renaissance was deeply involved in the conspiracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The original plan did not include the attack on the Duomo. The conspirators wanted poison the two brothers during a banquet<\/strong>, the day before. But Giuliano had felt unwell and hadn’t shown up, and everything had been postponed. There was only one possible opportunity left: the solemn mass of Sunday<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The change of location created a problem. The hitman assigned to kill Lorenzo, a professional soldier, refused: killing a man is fine, but not in church, in front of the altar. Two priests were chosen in his place. It seems like a paradox: the soldiers who backed out for religious scruples and two men of the church who accepted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the morning of April 26th, the Cathedral is packed. Giuliano, still unwell, isn’t there at first: two conspirators pick him up at his home and walk him arm in arm to the church, joking. As they walk, they hug him: he’s not sick; they’re checking to see if he’s wearing armor under his clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the moment of the elevation, when everyone bows their heads, the signal goes off. Bernardo Bandini and Francesco de’ Pazzi rush at Giuliano: the first stab hits his head; he takes a few steps and falls. Francesco continues to stab him on the ground with such fury that he wounds his own leg. Nineteen stab wounds will be counted on Giuliano’s body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few meters away, the two priests attack Lorenzo. But they are improvised assassins: the first shot grazes his neck, and Lorenzo has time to turn. He wraps his cloak around his arm like a shield, draws his sword, and retreats toward the choir, protected by his friends. One of them, Francesco Nori, places himself between him and Bandini and is killed instantly. Lorenzo climbs over the balustrade, crosses the choir, and locks himself in the sacristy with his men: the bronze doors close behind him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inside, no one knows what’s happening outside. One of the boys climbs the spiral staircase to the organ loft and from there sees the now empty church and Giuliano’s body left on the floor. Only then, recognizing the friends knocking, does the group open the doors and escort Lorenzo to the family mansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, the other half of the plan is already failing. Archbishop Salviati arrives at the Palazzo Vecchio with a group of armed men to occupy it, but the Gonfaloniere senses something, raises the alarm, and has them locked up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when Jacopo de’ Pazzi rides through the city on horseback, shouting “People and Freedom,” hoping for a revolt, the streets respond with the Medici cry: “Balls, balls!” The people don’t rise up against Lorenzo. They rise up against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The repression begins the same day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Francesco de’ Pazzi, wounded in the leg, was found at home, hidden in bed. He was dragged to the Palazzo Vecchio and hanged from one of the windows, just as he was, half-dressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly afterward, they hang Archbishop Salviati from the next window: an archbishop hanged in his bishop’s robes, before a crowd, is an image no one in Florence had ever seen before. Chronicles relate that in his final moments, struggling, he ended up biting the corpse of Francis hanging beside him. True or not, it’s a detail that Florentines will pass down for generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jacopo de’ Pazzi, the head of the family, had managed to escape towards the Mugello. They recognized him, brought him back to the city, and he too ended up at a window of the palace. But Florence wasn’t over for him: buried in Santa Croce, his body was exhumed, dragged through the streets by a gang of kids, and finally thrown into the Arno River. The two priests who had attacked Lorenzo were found hiding in the Badia Fiorentina and lynched before they even reached the executioner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A different fate befell the soldier who refused to strike in the church. Captured, he confessed everything: names, meetings, the pope’s role. His confession remains one of the main sources on the conspiracy to this day. In exchange, he obtained the only clemency available at the time: no rope, but beheading at the Bargello as a soldier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bernardo Bandini, the man who killed Giuliano, is missing. He fled far away, all the way to Constantinople, believing he was out of reach. He was wrong: Lorenzo wrote to the Sultan, and the Sultan had him arrested and sent back to Florence. Bandini was hanged from the windows of the Bargello in December 1479, more than a year and a half after the conspiracy. Among the crowd that day was a young artist who took out a sheet of paper and drew the hanging body, noting the colors of the clothes in the margins with the coolness of a man taking notes. His name was Leonardo da Vinci<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n Then there is revenge on memory. The name of the Pazzi is banned<\/strong>: whoever bears it must change it, the coat of arms with the dolphins is chipped from buildings, the streets named after the family are renamed.<\/p>\n\n\n On the walls of Palazzo Vecchio, Botticelli painted the conspirators hanged for all to see. Lorenzo didn’t just eliminate his enemies: he sought to erase them from Florence’s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sixtus IV, who had blessed the conspiracy, presented himself to the world as the injured party: he excommunicated Lorenzo, placed an interdict on Florence, and declared war, with the King of Naples at his side. For nearly two years, the situation deteriorated, and at a certain point, Florence truly seemed on the verge of defeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lorenzo reversed this with the riskiest move of his life: at the end of 1479, he secretly left for Naples and presented himself, alone, at the court of his enemy the king. It was a complete gamble, but incredibly, it worked. After weeks of negotiations, he returned to Florence with peace in hand, and the city welcomed him as a savior. From that moment on, no one, inside or outside Florence, would question his role again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there’s a slower consequence, one that will only be seen decades later. Giuliano had a son, born a few days after his death from an affair outside of marriage. Lorenzo took him into his home and raised him as his own. That child was named Giulio, and he would become Pope Clement VII. The conspiracy that was supposed to wipe out the Medici family ultimately placed one on the throne of Peter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost everything I’ve told you happened within a ten-minute walk. That means you can literally walk through history.<\/p>\n\n\n The site of the ambush is the cathedral itself, and the most interesting point is not where Giuliano fell, but where Lorenzo escaped. On the left side, near the high altar, is the Sacristy of the Masses: that’s where Lorenzo barricaded himself with his men. Look at the doors. They’re bronze, the work of Luca della Robbia. They had been installed a few decades earlier. That day, they made a difference: it’s no exaggeration to say that a piece of Medici history passed through those doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you look up above the sacristy, you’ll also see the choir loft, the organ gallery: it’s the spot from which one of Lorenzo’s group surveyed the empty church before opening the doors. The nave today is much more bare than it was in the 15th century, but the distances are the same. Stand near the choir and consider that there are only a few meters between where Giuliano was shot and where Lorenzo locked himself inside: everything was decided in a matter of seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Via del Proconsolo, a stone’s throw from the Bargello, stands the palace the family built during its heyday, completed less than ten years before the conspiracy. Florentines still call it the “Palazzo della Congiura.” The fa\u00e7ade is worth a look: the ground floor is made of strong, austere stone, while the upper floors are lighter, with elegant mullioned windows. It is a stone portrait of a family that aspired to be on par with the Medici.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look for the coat of arms. After the conspiracy, the Pazzi emblem, the dolphins, was chiseled away from half the city, but something has survived here: if the entrance is open, take a look at the inner courtyard, where the column capitals still bear the family symbols, dolphins and vases with the sacred fire. The building now houses offices, so it’s not open to visitors, but the courtyard can often be glimpsed from the entrance hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The windows from which Francesco de’ Pazzi and Archbishop Salviati were hanged are those on the fa\u00e7ade of Palazzo Vecchio, overlooking the square. Next time you cross Piazza della Signoria, try looking at them with an understanding of what happened there: it dramatically changes the effect on visitors. On the same fa\u00e7ade, Botticelli painted the hanged conspirators as a public warning; the frescoes were destroyed years later, but for over a decade, anyone passing by found them before their eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bargello, which we know today as a sculpture museum, was once the palace of justice. It was here that the soldier who confessed was beheaded, and it was from its windows that Bernardo Bandini, Giuliano’s murderer, was hanged after his capture in Constantinople. When you enter the courtyard, the one with the grand staircase and the coats of arms on the walls, you are in the exact place where Leonardo made his drawing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The day of April 26th began and ended on Via Larga, now Via Cavour: Lorenzo and Giuliano left Palazzo Medici that morning, and Lorenzo was brought back there, wounded, after the ambush. The palace is open to visitors, and it’s the perfect place to understand how the two brothers governed the city without any official title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last stop is the strangest, and for me the most interesting: the Pazzi Chapel, in the Santa Croce complex. It was commissioned from Brunelleschi by Andrea de’ Pazzi a generation before the conspiracy, when the family was at its peak. It is considered one of the absolute masterpieces of the Renaissance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fate has decreed that every year thousands of people enter that chapel. The Pazzi name, in the end, has outlived it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to retrace the day in the order it happened: Palazzo Medici, the Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio, the Bargello, and then Palazzo Pazzi and Santa Croce. It’s a leisurely walk that can be done in half a day, including the museums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Pazzi Conspiracy was the most violent day in the history of the Medici family: an ambush in the Duomo, during mass, to eliminate Lorenzo and Giuliano. From the conspirators’ palace to the windows where they were hanged, the locations of that day still exist, just a few minutes’ walk from each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":41753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"The Pazzi Conspiracy in Florence: history and places to see","_seopress_titles_desc":"On April 26, 1478, the Pazzi attempted to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in the Duomo. The story of the conspiracy and the places in Florence where it all happened.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-history-of-florence","category-travel-tips"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41755,"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41744\/revisions\/41755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/stefano-ussi-pazzi-conspiracy.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWhy did the Pazzi want to eliminate the Medici?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Who were the conspirators?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The events of April 26, 1478: what happened in the Cathedral<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Lorenzo’s revenge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/leonardo-da-vinci-the-pazzi-conspiracy-392x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/pazzi-family-logo.png\"){kind=logo}
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWhat changed after the conspiracy?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The places of the conspiracy that you can see today<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.florenceforanyone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/tour-of-the-pazzi-conspiracy-1-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nThe Cathedral<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Pazzi Palace<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Palazzo Vecchio and the Bargello<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Medici Palace and the Pazzi Chapel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n