Florentine palaces & their stories

In 1109 Guigliarello Acciaiuoli came from Brescia, where his family had made a fortune by working in steel (acciaio)--hence their name. He bought many houses in Borgo S.S. Apost...

When in 1380 Giorgio Scali and Tommaso Strozzi attacked the Palazzo del Podestà and set Giovanni di Cambio free, the Signori thought it was time, as Machiavelli writes, “to libe...

It marks the grave of the favourite horse of Carlo Cappello, who was the Venetian ambassador during the siege of Florence in 1529. Varchi says, “he was most popular in the city...

The principal palace of the Bardi family in Via de’ Bardi, where the beautiful Dianora is supposed to have lived (see p. 57), was bought by the family of the Tempi, whose name i...

“O Buondelmonti! what ill counselling Prevail’d on thee to break the plighted bond? Many, who now are weeping, would rejoice, Had God to Ema given thee, the first time Thou near...

The Capponi family is said to have come from Lucca about 1216, and gave no less than ten Gonfaloniers and fifty-six Priors to the city of their adoption, in whose history they p...

His eldest son Giovanni, knight of the Order of S. John, sent by the Grand Master on an embassy to the Greek Emperor at Constantinople, by his beauty and his engaging manners wo...

A peasant named Balducci, from Vinci, was the ancestor of the Feroni family. One of his descendants, of the name of Ferone, established himself at Empoli as a dyer, and had deal...

Bartolomeo Ammannati built this palace for the rich merchant Simone da Firenzuola in 1577. He died soon afterwards, leaving a will forbidding his sons, or their heirs, “to dare,...

The Giacomini were among the illustrious families in olden days in Florence, and their coat of arms is still to be seen on an angle of this beautiful little palace. Messer Ghera...

The palace is decorated in _grafite_, and on a line with the arms are the favourite emblems of the Duke, a capricorn, a tortoise with a sail and two crossed anchors. It has alwa...

The Pazzi, who claim a Roman descent, came originally from Fiesole, and were always Guelphs. Excluded by Giano della Bella, in 1292, from all participation in the government of...

About 1440 Luca Pitti commissioned the great architect Brunelleschi to build for him a palace more magnificent than that of the Medici in Via Larga (now Palazzo Riccardi). “Not...

In honour of the visit of the Princess Anna de’ Medici with her husband, the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his two brothers, and of the Duke of Mantua and his wife, who was...

After the battle of Figline in 1250, when the Guelphs obtained so decided a victory over the Ghibellines, it was decided to create a Captain of the People and a Council of Elder...

“I record how on the 22nd Feb. 1513, Agostino di Bernardo Capponi and Pietro Pagolo di Giachineotto Boscoli were condemned to death as conspirators against the house of Medici,...

Nearly all Pandolfo’s sons died violent deaths. Orazio, the eldest, attempted the life of Francesco I. and was hung fifteen years after his father, at the same window of the Bar...

The conspiracy of the Pazzi is a matter of history. Attempts to murder the two Medici brothers had been frustrated by Giuliano’s failing, on account of illness, to attend banque...

Rastrelli tells us that “on the 5th January, 1536, in carnival time, the Duke and Lorenzino disguised themselves as mountaineers and on sorry donkeys rode about the town paying...

Tradition says that the ancestor of the noble house of Rucellai was a Messer Ferro, who came from Brittany with an Emperor, and took up his abode at Campi, near Florence, where...

Giovan Battista, great-grandson of Pandolfo, a favourite of Cosimo I., acted as one of the Captains in the game of calcio, celebrated in the annals of Florence for its magnifice...

Niccolò, his nephew, was a great admirer and friend of S. Catherine of Siena. Whenever she came to Florence, she stayed in his house, and he bought and arranged for her a tiny h...

Of Filippo’s life at Naples, where he made a large fortune and became a favourite with the King, who eventually obtained his recall from exile from Lorenzo de’ Medici, we have a...

When Giulio de’ Medici, the illegitimate son of Giuliano, ascended the papal throne as Clement VII., Filippo Strozzi hastened to Rome to congratulate his wife’s kinsman, and to...

The riches of the Torrigiani family were increased by the inheritance of the parsimonious Luca, Archbishop for twenty-four years of the rich See of Ravenna and the son of an hei...

Three years later the Signoria decided to build a loggia, a necessary adjunct in those days to a palace, on the southern side of the Piazza where the houses and tower of the Min...

A great name is associated with this old Florentine palace--that of Savonarola. When in July, 1495, he preached a farewell sermon in the Duomo, in the presence of the Signoria a...

For the marriage of Francesco de’ Medici to the Archduchess Joan of Austria the old palace was sumptuously decorated. Round the courtyard, in the centre of which Cosimo I. had a...

[6] This is not the place to enter more fully into the subject; the reader can consult J. A. Symonds’ _Renaissance in Italy_; the _Manuale_ quoted above; G. S. Scipioni, _L. B....

Buondelmonti, The, declared rebels, 23; origin of the, 54; Buondelmonte, his quarrel with Oddo Fifanti, 55; his marriage with a daughter of the Amidei arranged, 55; sees Donati’...

Varchi, Benedetto, 9, 24; on Bacio Valori, 25, 59, 72, 131, 144; attempted murder of the Duke Alessandro, 172, 259; on Ippolito de’ Medici, 261, 262; state of things in Florence...