Located in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Vegni, which appears today in the form resulting from renovation carried out in the 19th century by Giuseppe Martelli, the University of Florence Department of Psychology originated from the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, founded in 1903 by the physician and philosopher Francesco De Sarlo, as a part of the Regio Istituto di Studi Superiori [Royal Institute of Advanced Studies]. Considered the first important Italian university laboratory of experimental psychology, it boasted the names, among students and collaborators, of such outstanding personages as the future philosopher Antonio Aliotta and the theoretician and experimenter Enzo Bonaventura. It was in this Laboratory, furnished with the most modern equipment of the time, that the two scholars elaborated what were to become some of the most important texts of Italian psychology in the 20th century.

After having become the Department of Psychology in 1990, it has occupied various locations up to the current one in Via San Niccolò; today it is waiting to move into its new premises at San Salvi.

The Department possesses a collection of physio-psychological material (about 100 items), founded in collaboration with the Experimental Psychology Laboratory and enriched over the years. It also has an interesting Library of specialised works, whose original works date from the end of the 19th century and concern mainly studies in the experimental psychology of the times, with special attention to the school of the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt.