Mondo Knows Facts

The piano was invented in Florence around 1700

Bartolomeo Cristofori built the first one for the Medici court

Bartolomeo Cristofori, an instrument maker at the Medici court in Florence, built the first piano around 1700. He called it a gravicembalo col piano e forte, meaning a harpsichord that plays soft and loud. Unlike a harpsichord, its hammers let the player vary volume by touch.

Piano forte Cristofori 1722
LPLT ยท CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

Go further

More facts like this

Tags: piano, invention, florence

The piano was invented in Florence around 1700: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Bartolomeo Cristofori built the first one for the Medici court. The figure is taken from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a music fact?
Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.