The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum is devoted to the history of the Ferragamo company, the life of its founder Salvatore Ferragamo and his creations. Every year it organises exhibitions that delve into the relationship between fashion and art.

The museum is situated in Palazzo Spini Feroni – built in 1289 and purchased by Ferragamo in 1938 to make it the headquarters for his company and his workshop – and in its rooms it displays masterpieces of Florentine art from the 17th and 18th centuries.

When Salvatore Ferragamo purchased the palace, he was already widely famous as a footwear stylist. After 13 years of activity in the USA – in California he was known as the “Shoemaker of the Stars” thanks to the large number of actors and actresses who frequented his “Hollywood Boot Shop”– his brand became a reference point in the fashion field: from his traditionally elegant shapes to his more eccentric creations, often genuine art objects of high design and great modernity.

To safeguard such a stock of creativity, the family wanted to devote a full-blown museum to the stylist; this is hosted in the underground rooms of the large 13th-century building that also houses the company headquarters and (on the ground floor) the boutique with its shop windows facing onto the street. The eight rooms are devoted to temporary exhibitions about the relationship between fashion and art. One or two rooms are used for the history of the Ferragamo fashion house and its creativity, and on display there are over 14,000 models conserved in the museum archive.