Ferragamo

Salvatore Ferragamo learned shoemaking as a boy near Naples, made his name shoeing Hollywood in the 1920s — studying anatomy at university to understand the foot's mechanics — and returned to Italy in 1927, settling in Florence, where the house still occupies the medieval Palazzo Spini Feroni on Via de' Tornabuoni. His inventions were structural, not decorative: the cork wedge of 1936, patented and imitated worldwide; the cage heel; experiments in unexpected materials during wartime shortages. The palazzo houses a museum of his lasts and prototypes alongside the flagship. The house continues in family hands at the top, producing shoes, leather goods, and silks; the Vara bow pump and Gancini hardware are its recognizable constants. Visit the museum before the store — few luxury houses can document their founder's genius so concretely, then sell you its descendants downstairs.

The museum in the palazzo basement charges modest admission and rewards an hour; the wedge prototypes and celebrity lasts are the house's genuine treasures.