The Frame Hotel holds a truly extraordinary secret. The current boutique hotel is the result of a complex restoration of a historic 19th-century hotel, the same hotel where Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa was found. Having disappeared from the Louvre Museum in 1911, the Mona Lisa reappeared two years later in one of the hotel’s very rooms, when decorator Vincenzo Peruggia showed it to art collector Antonio Geri and the director of the Royal Uffizi Gallery, Giovanni Poggi. To the two astonished experts, he declared that he himself had stolen the masterpiece to return it to the city of Florence, from which he believed it had been unjustly taken.

Today, the memory of the incident is reflected in the fabulous collection of Inclusive Art works featuring the enigmatic Mona Lisa and embellishing the hotel’s rooms. Specially created by New York-based street artist Denis Ouch, the 24 original works, reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s Pop Art, are displayed in the Boutique hotel and reproduced as backlit bedheads in each of the rooms.

Adding to the artistic uniqueness of the hotel is the imposing staircase that catches the eye with its semi-elliptical shape, an artefact that is almost unique in the San Lorenzo district. With its self-supporting ‘ashlars’, or steps, in strong stone, it constitutes an artefact of exceptional architectural merit, together with the stone column flanking the lift. 

The staircase, probably built at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, can perhaps be attributed to the craftsmen who built the semi-elliptical staircase of the bell tower of the Cathedral of Pietrasanta (in the province of Lucca). Like this one, it is a self-supporting staircase, in which each step does not work ‘shelf-like’ (i.e. inserted into the surrounding stone wall) but rather interlocking with the lower and upper steps. This peculiarity gives form to the magnificent semi-elliptical spiral, which demonstrates an artistic and static exceptionality of great value.