A few years later, Pope Clement VII positioned beneath the northern wall of the garden. a copy of the Laocoön – the famous marble group from the Hellenistic period conserved in the Vatican – also by Bandinelli (now in the Uffizi). open image in a new window
After the parenthesis of the last Republic (1527-1530), the palazzo in Via Larga became the residence of the first Medici dukes: Alessandro open image in a new window and, after his assassination, Cosimo I. open image in a new window Through Cosimo, descendant of Lorenzo il Vecchio, the palazzo passed for the first time to the secondary branch of the family, from which the Grand-dukes who were to reign over Tuscany for the following two centuries were descended.
A document dating to 1531 makes the first mention of the “Porta dei Muli” , the new service doorway opened in the building which had been annexed to the north of the palazzo, and provided in the meantime with a new facade.
In the fourth decade of the sixteenth century the palazzo rediscovered its former glory on the occasion of important public events, such as the visit of the Emperor Charles V of Habsburg (29 April 1536), the future father-in-law of Alessandro, and the triumphal entry of Eleonora di Toledo, when she married Cosimo I (30 June 1539), followed by spectacular celebrations in the days that followed.