Piazza della Repubblica, Florence
43°46′17″N 11°15′14″E / 43.77139°N 11.25389°E
Piazza della Repubblica (Italian pronunciation:
History
Roman forum
Piazza della Repubblica marks the site of the
The chronicler Giovanni Villani reported an oral tradition that there was a temple to Mars on or near this site, and that Mars was the city's patron god, which determined the city's warlike character. According to Villani, in the Middle Ages a statue of Mars was placed on the predecessor to the Ponte Vecchio, which, along with the bridge, was swept away in the flood of 1333.[1]
Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and the Ghetto
In the early medieval period the forum area was densely inhabited. Before the closure of the fifth circle of city walls, chroniclers record that there was no longer a single garden or pasture in the city, and that urban crowding led to tenements with ever-rising floors, including case-torri (tower houses).
The area retained its function as a meeting place and market, which was institutionalised after 1000. As in other Italian towns, Florence came to define public space intended for commerce, with its complementary spaces nearby, the piazza del
The area was a maze tightly packed streets and buildings in addition to the marketplace. The Mercato Vecchio had numerous shrines and churches razed in the mid-18th century.
The sole surviving witness to the old piazza del Mercato is the Colonna della Dovizia or
The piazza "risanata"
The present appearance of the square is the result of the city planning announced and carried out on the proclamation of Florence as the capital of Italy (1865–71), with particularly intense activity in this Piazza between 1885 and 1895. In this period, known as the Risanamento in the commemorative nineteenth-century terminology (or, by its detractors, the sventramento or ruining), large parts of the city centre were demolished.
The decision to broaden the square allowed the total destruction of buildings of great importance: medieval towers, churches, the corporate seats of the Arti, some palaces of noble families, as well as craftsmen's shops and residences. The demolition was presented as a necessity if the area's insanitary conditions were to be improved, but was in reality led above all to building speculation and to legitimization of the will of the emerging middle-class emergente, protagonist in the events immediately prior to unification.
The town in fact underwent an enormous loss, minimally compensated for by the rescue of monuments like Vasari's
In 1888, after the demolition of the hovels in the center of the Mercato, the old piazza del Mercato Vecchio reappeared, with the Loggia, the
On 20 September 1890, with the building-sites still open to rebuild the palazzoni in the square, the
The palaces that rose in the new square, painted bitterly by the young Telemaco Signorini, followed the eclectic fashion of the time and had been planned by already well-known architects:
The porticos with the triumphal arch, called the "Arcone", was designed by Micheli and was inspired by the most courtly Florentine Renaissance architecture, even if its additions to that style seem to be distant from the true ancient style. The pompous inscription that dominates the square was dictated, it seems, from Isidoro del Lungo, or another literary source:
L'ANTICO CENTRO DELLA CITTÀ
DA SECOLARE SQUALLORE
A VITA NUOVA RESTITUITO
(The ancient centre of the city / restored from age-old squalor / to new life)
On top of the Arcone is an allegorical group of three women in plaster, representing Italy, Art and Science. The Florentines instead nicknamed them after three famous prostitutes of the era, la Starnotti, la Cipischioni e la Trattienghi. Having deteriorated, the group was removed in 1904.
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Piazza del Mercato Vecchio, c. 1888
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The inauguration of the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, 20 September 1890
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Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, circa 1896
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Piazza della Repubblica, 2007
The piazza today
The statue of
The Cafès
Today piazza della Repubblica houses three caffès: Caffè Gilli, Paszkowski and Caffè Giubbe Rosse.
Description
North side
The north side is about 75 metres long and is made up of a single large building. On its ground floor are Caffè Gilli (to the right) and of the Caffè Paszkowski (on the left). Its east end is the connection between the piazza and via Roma, and at its west end is the piazza's connection with via Brunelleschi.
South side
The south side is made up of a single long building, containing the historical Caffè delle Giubbe Rosse. Entirely covered with photographs, drawings and memories of its famous patrons, the Caffè was the location for the brawl between the Milanese Futurists of Marinetti and the Florentine artists centred on the magazine La Voce di Ardengo Soffici.
At its two ends, it meets via Calimala (to the east) and via Pellicceria (to the west).
East side
The east side is made up of two buildings, between which via degli Speziali runs into the piazza.
The building on the left is the Savoy Hotel, built by Vincenzo Micheli. It has been a hotel ever since its inception and its facade is marked by an eclectic style based on the renewal of classical motifs in Florentine architecture. The Palazzo was the model for other palaces on the square which were constructed a few decades afterwards.
Along this side runs a road roadway that to the north is a continuation of via Roma and to the south runs into via Calimala.
West side
The west side is delimited by the porticos that run north along via Brunelleschi and south along via Pellicceria.
These two lengths of portico are united by a large triumphal arch of I triumph (Arcone) facing via degli Speziali, under which is via degli Strozzi's entrance onto the piazza.
The arcone and the portico Gambrinus, where Cafe Gambrinus (an important meeting place in nineteenth and twentieth century Florence) and Cinema Gambrinus used to be located, were planned and realized by Vincenzo Micheli; the building is designed as a monument sealing the nineteenth-century broadening of the square, as is celebrated by an inscription (quoting Isidoro del Lungo) above the arch.
At the sides of the central arcone the porticos are looser in design, typical of the building of the period, connecting on one side to Palazzo delle Poste (1917).
Festivals
With the piazza's demolition and reconstruction, the continuity of the area's festivals was broken. For example, the Palio dei barberi ceased in the 19th century, as did the two Easter day processions that led up to the Scoppio del Carro (the Brindellone procession drawn by oxen from near Porta al Prato, and the procession with the fire, solemnly lit in the
Notes
- ^ "...e del bello e nobile tempio de' Fiorentini... i Fiorentini levaro il loro idolo il quale appellavono Io Iddio Marte e puoscalo la su un' alta torre presso al fiume d'Arno e nol vollone rompere nè spezzare perocché per loro antiche memorie trovavano che il desto idolo di Marti era consegrato sotto ascendente di tal pianeta... (Villani, i.60).
- ^ Photographs, paintings and drawings of the Mercato Vecchio are displayed in the Museo di Firenze com'era.
Bibliography
- (in Italian) Francesco Cesati, La grande guida delle strade di Firenze, Newton Compton Editori, Roma 2003.
- (in Italian) Piero Bargellini, Com'era Firenze 100 anni fa, Bonechi editore, Firenze 1998.
Sources
- This page is a translation of its foreign language equivalents.
External links
- (in Italian) Comune di Firenze site, with this article's original GFDL version (authorisation for use of this text on Wikipedia here).
- (in Italian) Another page on the Comune site from which another part of the text comes.
- (in Italian) Places of the Faith in the care of the Regione Toscana