The Story of Florence

by Edmund G. Gardner

The famous inundation of November 1333 swept away all the bridges, excepting the Ponte Rubaconte. The present Ponte Santa Trinità and Ponte alla Carraia were erected for Duke Cosimo I. by Bartolommeo Ammanati, shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century.

Turning from the river at the Ponte Vecchio by the Via Por Sta. Maria, we see on the right the old church of San Stefano, with a completely modernised interior. Here in 1426 Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Niccolò da Uzzano held a meeting of some seventy citizens, and Rinaldo proposed to check the growing power of the populace by admitting the magnates into the government and reducing the number of Arti Minori. Their plan failed through the opposition of Giovanni dei Medici, who acquired much popularity thereby. It should be remembered that it was not here, as usually stated, but in the Badia, which was also dedicated to St. Stephen, that Boccaccio lectured on Dante.

Right and left two very old streets diverge, the Via Lambertesca and the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, with splendid mediæval towers. In the former, at the angle of the Via di Por Santa Maria, are the towers of the Girolami and Gherardini, round which there was fierce fighting in the expulsion of the Ghibellines in 1266. Opposite, at the opening of the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, are the towers of the Baldovinetti (the tower of San Zenobio) and of the Amidei–la casa di che nacque il vostro fleto, as Cacciaguida puts it to Dante: "the house from which your wailing sprang," whose feud with the Buondelmonti was supposed to have originated the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in Florence. And further down the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, at the opening of the Chiasso delle Misure, is the tall and stately tower of these Buondelmonti themselves, who also had a palace on the opposite side of the street.

The old church of the Santissimi Apostoli, in the Piazza del Limbo, has an inscription on its façade stating that it was founded by Charlemagne, and consecrated by Archbishop Turpin, with Roland and Oliver as witnesses. It appears to have been built in the eleventh century, and is the oldest church on this side of the Arno, with the exception of the Baptistery. Its interior, which is well preserved, is said to have been taken by Filippo Brunelleschi as the model for San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito. In it is a beautiful Ciborium by Andrea della Robbia, with monuments of some of the Altoviti family.

THE TOWER OF S. ZANOBI

The Piazza Santa Trinità was a great place for social and other gatherings in mediæval and renaissance Florence. Here on the first of May 1300, a dance of girls was being held to greet the calends of May in the old Florentine fashion, when a band of mounted youths of the Donati, Pazzi and Spini came to blows with a rival company of the Cerchi and their allies; and thus the first blood was shed in the disastrous struggle between the Bianchi and Neri. A few days later a similar faction fight took place on the other side of the bridge, in the Piazza Frescobaldi, on the occasion of a lady's funeral. The great Palazzo Spini, opposite the church, was built at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century by Geri Spini, the rich papal banker and one of the leaders of the "black" faction. Here he received the Pope's ambassadors and made a great display of his wealth and magnificence, as we gather from Boccaccio's Decameron, which gives us an amusing story of his friendship with Cisti the baker, and another of the witty repartees of Madonna Oretta, Geri's wife, a lady of the Malaspina. When Charles of Valois entered Florence in November 1301, Messer Geri entertained a portion of the French barons here, while the Prince himself took up his quarters with the Frescobaldi over the river; during that tumultuous period of Florentine history that followed the expulsion of the Bianchi, Geri was one of the most prominent politicians in the State.

Savonarola's processions of friars and children used to pass through this piazza and over the bridge, returning by way of the Ponte Vecchio. On the Feast of Corpus Christi, 1497, as the Blessed Sacrament was being borne along, with many children carrying red crosses, they were set upon by some of the Compagnacci. The story is quaintly told by Landucci: "As the said procession was passing over the Bridge of Santa Trinità, certain youths were standing to see it pass, by the side of a little church which is on the bridge on the right hand going towards Santo Spirito. Seeing those children with the crosses, they said: 'Here are the children of Fra Girolamo.' And one of them coming up to them, took one of these crosses and, snatching it out of the hand of that child, broke it and threw it into the Arno, as though he had been an infidel; and all this he did for hatred of the Friar."

The column in the Piazza–taken from the Baths of Caracalla at Rome–was set here by Duke Cosimo I., to celebrate his victory over the heroic Piero Strozzi, il maravigliosissimo bravo Piero Strozzi as Benvenuto Cellini calls him, in 1563. The porphyry statue of Justice was set high up on this pedestal by the most unjust of all rulers of Florence, the Grand Duke Francesco I., Cosimo's son. This same piazza witnessed a not over friendly meeting of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Leonardo, at the time that he was engaged upon his cartoon for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, was walking in the square, dressed in his usual sumptuous fashion, with a rose coloured tunic reaching down to his knees; when a group of citizens, who were discussing Dante, called him and asked him the meaning of a passage in question. At that moment Michelangelo passed by, and Leonardo courteously referred them to him. "Explain it yourself," said the great sculptor, "you, who made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and could not cast it, and to your shame left it in the lurch."[50] And he abruptly turned his back on the group, leaving Leonardo red with either shame or anger.