Palazzo dell'Arcone di Piazza

Preesistencies

The palace was built on buildings that once faced the west side of the Mercato Vecchio square (case degli Alfieri Strinati, tower of the Tornaquinci), of via dei Naccaioli — today via dei Brunelleschi (church of Santa Maria in Campidoglio), of via Pellicceria, and on the sides of via dei Ferravecchi — today via degli Strozzi (on the north side the palazzo della Luna, on the south side the church of San Pier Buonconsiglio, a palazzo of the Sassetti and one of the Anselmi). It covered small squares and alleyways, such as the chiasso del Guanto (or del Leoncino) and di Borghese, the piazza of Santa Maria in Campidoglio and the vicolo del Campidoglio, the piazza of the Pollaioli, the alley and the piazza della Luna (the latter also known as the piazza della Paglia).

These medieval structures had in turn been built on the Roman forum of Florentia, in particular on the temple dedicated to the Capitoline Triad, on the large baths behind it, towards the west, and on a domus at Via Pellicceria. During the excavations carried out at the time of the demolitions, traces of Etruscan settlements were also found, including some Villanovan burials between via Strozzi and via dei Vecchietti.

History and description

The large building, erected to a design by architect Vincenzo Micheli (1895), defines itself as a scenographic backdrop to the square, laid out from 1883 with the destruction of the Mercato Vecchio and the Jewish pond. Beyond its being a palace, the architecture transcends the need to offer a civil dwelling building in the bourgeois sense, to become a monumental urban sign, and impose itself through the great archway leading onto Via Strozzi, developed to include the two orders of the façades of the lateral buildings, each of which is developed for a further six axes, the last of which is overhanging. Each of these lateral bodies then develops deeply into the respective blocks, two internal courtyards towards via Brunelleschi, and an elongated one towards via Pellicceria. The wide and high archway with the large central body, adorned with statues and crowned by the plastic group of the Italy enthroned accompanied by the figures of Art and Science (removed in 1904), framed the equestrian statue of the king Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, placed in the centre of the square and later moved to the Piazzale delle Cascine. The three statues were mockingly renamed by the Florentines with the names of three prostitutes of the period, as can be found in some satirical sonnets of the time by Vamba and others: the Starnotti or Schiccherona, a tenant of Russian origin whose surname was Starnowka; then the Cambarbini and the Trattienghi. …