We were walking through the wonderful Oltrarno quarter of Florence and held no expectations except for the obvious - enjoying the authenticity of this artists' quarter and finding more good coffee and food. We were talking about the Rosicrucian layout of the Torrigiani Garden, for which we had managed to receive a private invitation and guided tour the following Monday.

That’s when our friend stopped and pointed to a door to the left. Look, she said, they even have a masonic museum in Florence! That was no small surprise indeed as we had just talked about the Masonic influence on the Torrigiani Garden, but also as our friend has been working in Florence for more than ten years, particularly in this quarter, and had never come across this place before.

I stepped closer to see the opening hours, when the door opened and an old man with a white beard invited me in. How could you possibly not accept such an invitation of fate? So my wife, her friend and my daughter continued walking on to the highly recommendable independent bookshop and coffee bar ‘Black Spring’ (Via di Camaldoli 10R) while I was allowed to disappear into the depth of this little known gem, the Museo di Simbologia Masonic Firenze.

Cristiano Franceschini, the white-bearded owner walked me through the first floor of his impressive collection and pointed out how the countless artefacts had been assembled and grouped into categories. Unfortunately I missed a lot of his introduction, simply because I was so blown away by the sheer vastness of this collection. Since 2012, when the door of the museum opened close to Via Maggio where Italy’s first Masonic lodge was founded in 1731 by a group of English expatriates, Mr.Franceschini is sharing the output of a forty-year-long hunt after Masonic artefacts with the world.

Here is what the local news magazine The Florentine had to say about it when the museum first opened: