The Horne Foundation Museum, established in accordance with the will of Herbert Percy Horne, comprises a rich collection of works of art which Horne left to the Italian state along with the palazzo in which the collection was housed. Herbert Horne was one of a group of Anglo-Saxon intellectuals who had a major impact on cultural life in Florence at the turn of the 19th century. Born in London in 1864, an architect and a man of many interests in the fields of art, literature and music, he took up permanent residence in Florence at the beginning of the 20th century in order to pursue his interests as a scholar and collector. Horne bought this 15th century “palagetto“, or small palace, in via de’ Benci in 1911 and proceeded to restore it with philological precision and taste, his aim being to create not so much a museum as a perfect example of the kind of dwelling in which a wealthy Renaissance noble or merchant would have lived. The furnishing of the rooms was completed after his death in 1916 by Count Carlo Gamba and Giovanni Poggi, who diligently executed the instructions that Horne had personally imparted to them. The museum houses a unique and extremely valuable collection of paintings, sculptures, ceramics, goldsmith’s work and other artefacts, furniture, plaquettes, seals, fabrics, cutlery and a variety of household and kitchen utensils dating back for the most part from the 14th to 16th centuries.