A tour to Piazza della Signoria, Davanzati Palace, Orsanmichele, and Dante's area

Today me and the Intro to Florence group went to the Piazza Della Signoria, which is located near the fake statue of David, and the Uffizi Museum. We learned a little background of the Piazza while we stood in the center of it. We learned that all Ghibelline tower houses were destroyed after their defeat in 1267. It was created by Arnolfo di Cambio, and it was originally built to house the Signoria or government of Priors (Priori). We are currently learning about all these people and the history of the government in class. Next we ventured to the Signoria's Loggia. This project was traditionally attributed to Andrea Orcagna.

We then walked over to the Palazzo Davanzati, which was currently under restoration, so the entrance view was waived. It smelled like rubber cement in the whole building because they are cleaning the wood to depose of termites. Yuck! I thought the mini tour of this Palace was very interesting though. The palace contained all its original furniture and artwork. The second story consisted of a main room with holes in the floor to watch the customers entering the shop downstairs. It also housed a portable safe with a very elaborate lock (see picture). We learned about how to tell which era the furniture came in based on the wood structure and colors. Pretty cool :) Like for example, the bed in the picture above is in the Baroque period because you can see the transition to using gold which means it was done in the 16th century.


Next we ventured onto Orsanmichele which initially had a small church in this area built during the Lombard period (c. 700). The interior of this church was gorgeous- one can tell that this was not born a church since there is no central nave like the other churches in Florence. (see picture). The exterior was awesome too; during the first twenty years of the 15th century the 7 major guilds and 7 of the 14 minor guilds decorated the exterior niches of Orsanmichele with statues of their patron saints. Here is a picture of a sculpture I took outside the church.

Towards the end of the tour we went to the Palazzo dell'Arte della Lana. The Lana Guilt or "Arte della Lana" was one of the wealthiest of the 7 major guilds. Lastly we went to Dante's Neighborhood. We saw the Torre della Castagna, or Chestnut Tower. It was the meeting place of Guild directors (Priors) to judge and deliberate on the most difficult problems in the guild corporations. See picture on your left :) Just down the street was the Santa Margherita dei Cerchi, which was Beatrice's Portinari's parish church. Beatrice was Dante's long lost love-- as learnt in class. He always had a spiritual kind of love for her, but back then marriages were prearranged and they both ended up marrying other people, although he always truly loved her. It made me sad to think that marriages a lot of times were not out of love. I am glad things are not the same anymore! Apparently marriages were prearranged until the early 20th century. Yeesh!

That pretty much concludes the tour for the day in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed some of the history (thanks to my notes and handout from my Professor Carrara). The rest of the day will probably be spent catching up on homework and emails and such. I got my web cam to work, so I got to see Chris for the first time since I have left for Europe. It was very nice!