One of the more overlooked museums in Florence (because Florence is ALL about the Renaissance of course!) is the "Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia" - the Alinari Photography museum on Piazza Santa Maria Novella.

I am looking forward to seeing the current exhibit, PARIS, CAPITAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY 1920-40:

From the early 1920s onwards, Paris became a nexus for the cultural avant-garde. The city's status as the centre of new European photography was undisputed. Photographers from all sorts of countries and backgrounds came to Paris, attracted by the city's reputation for modernity and economic prosperity. Many foreign artists facing exile saw Paris as a refuge and a haven of freedom. Photography in France thus came to enjoy a period of great creative energy, both individual and collective. French photographers including Jacques-André Boiffard, Florence Henri, Maurice Tabard, Roger Schall, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Emmanuel Sougez, Pierre Boucher, and René Zuber rubbed shoulders with foreign photographers who had come to live in Paris, either by choice or because events had forced them to flee their homelands. They included the Germans Germaine Krull, Erwin Blumenfeld, Marianne Breslauer, Gisèle Freund, and Ilse Bing, the Hungarians Ergy Landau, André Kertész, Rogi-André, André Steiner, François Kollar, and Brassaï, the Russians Hoyningen-Huene and Rudomine, the Americans Man Ray and Berenice Abbott, the Belgian Raoul Ubac, and the Lithuanian Moses Vorobeichic, better known as Moï Ver, to name but a few. Many of these photographers were doubly outsiders: not only were they expatriates living far from their home countries, they were also young, avant-garde artists breaking with cultural tradition. This cultural melting-pot led to particularly rich encounters between certain photographers, crossing the boundaries of nationality, such as Man Ray and his French assistant Jacques-André Boiffard and Germaine Krull and her Romanian-born assistant Eli Lotar. Lotar also later worked for Jean Painlevé, Raoul Ubac, and Erwin Blumenfeld.

Open: 10 am to 7 pm (closed Wednesdays)
Admission: Adults €9 (includes exhibit and Museum)
Exhibit ends April 11th, 2010