Palace Envy

Six centuries of intrigue--fortunes won and lost, passion, murder, and manners--enliven this "biography" of a celebrated Renaissance palazzo.

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When Allison Levy, a Renaissance scholar on sabbatical in Florence, saw an advertisement for an apartment in the Palazzo Rucellai, she couldn't believe her luck. An architectural masterwork that can be found in every art history textbook and travel guide to Italy, it was a revered pilgrimage site for her, but it wasn't until she dwelled within its walls that the palazzo began to yield its secrets. Witty and illuminating, Levy's colorful prose brings six centuries of the palace's designers and denizens to life via captivating tales of Leon Battista Alberti, the architect of Palazzo Rucellai; Giovanni Rucellai, the extravagant socialite banker who commissioned the project; Filippo Brunelleschi, the 15th-century genius who engineered Florence's famous "Duomo;" and Alvise di Robilant, the aristocratic art dealer whose 1997 murder within the palace goes unsolved to this day. Levy's own encounters with contemporary Florentines--including a romantic misadventure with an eccentric nobleman--link the past to the present and reveal the shocking hold "Old Europe" still exerts on the hearts of minds of its visitors. Allison Levy, an art historian specializing in the visual culture of early modern Italy, is the recipient of numerous grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Whiting Foundation, and the American Association of University Women, among others. Born and raised in New Orleans, she lives in New York.