The city evolution

The urban history of Florence and the surrounding territory is presented through twenty phases of development. Each card comprises a text – for which sources and in-depth information are available in the archive – and a map that assists in understanding the urban fabric, its relationship with waterways, green areas and outer villages; its changes and expansions, from the Etruscan settlements to the Roman fortifications, from the sixteenth-century fortresses to the nineteenth-century demolitions and the city plans of the mid-twentieth century and the current metropolitan city.

titolo

Legenda+-

rivers

walls

streets

emerging architectures

city gates

within walls settlements

parks

/ 750 a.C.
/ 59 a.C
/ 123 d.C.
/ 394
/ 542
/ 978
/ 1150
/ 1279
/ 1296
/ 1333
/ 1436
/ 1529
/ 1565
/ 1608
/ 1737
/ 1810
/ 1865
/ 1928
/ 1966
/ 1982

Before Florence

The area of the current centre of Florence is already inhabited.

/ 750 a.C.

Around the first half of the eighth century BC, shortly before the foundation of Rome, the remains of a few individuals were buried inside funerary vessels in a small necropolis on the edge of what is now Piazza della Repubblica. The tombs, provided with simple grave goods, represent the first evidence of human presence in this area, perhaps already linked to a stable settlement and a route across the Arno.
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The foundation of Florentia

Caesar enacts an agrarian law which is followed by the foundation of Florentia.

/ 59 a.C

The lex Iulia agraria, enacted by Julius Caesar in 59 BC, allowed for the distribution of public lands to the poorest citizens. Among the lands that were distributed were those of the plain at the foot of Fiesole, reclaimed and subdivided into small estates during the last decades of the first century BC. The colonization was completed by the foundation of a new city near the Arno, which was given the name Florentia.
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Imperial Florentia

Florentia is reached by the new route of the Via Cassia

/ 123 d.C.

The construction of a new route of the Via Cassia, dated by a milestone inscription to AD 123, seems to testify to the importance acquired by the colony during Hadrian’s reign; the town was now reached and crossed by the new consular road, which formed part of an itinerary linking Rome with northern Italy, reflecting increased trade and the urban expansion of the city. The town grew and was graced with important public buildings during this period.
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The christianisation of the city

Ambrose consecrates the church of San Lorenzo

/ 394

Following the arrival of Christianity, during the fourth century Florentia saw an increase in the importance of the Christian community, which began making donations to a local church. According to tradition, the donation of the wealthy matron Juliana was used to build the basilica of San Lorenzo, founded outside the city walls. The church was consecrated at Easter 394 by St Ambrose, invited to Florentia perhaps to counter the Arian heresy. The church building’s location gave a new direction to the city’s urban structure.
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Crisis in the age of invasions

Totila besieges Florentia

/ 542

Giovanni Villani’s Cronica, written in the first half of the fourteenth century, attributes the conquest and destruction of Florentia to the Ostrogoth king Totila through a series of deceitful and cruel actions. Villani mixes various characters and historical episodes, concentrating memories of a long period of conflicts and incursions distorted by popular tradition into the events of Totila. These events brought about a crisis in the city and its urban layout. As for Totila, he did indeed besiege the city but never conquered it.
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The early medieval city

Willa, Marchioness of Tuscia, founds the Abbey of Santa Maria

/ 978

The Abbey of Santa Maria, or the Florentine Badia (abbey), one of the oldest and most important monastic complexes in Florence, was founded by Willa, mother of the Marquis of Tuscia, Ugo, assigning her own property and estate to it. The foundation served to consolidate Ugo’s power in the Florentine area, but at the same time was part of the process of widespread overlapping of churches and ecclesiastical complexes in the late medieval city.
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The urban renaissance

The lantern at the top of the Baptistery of S. Giovanni is constructed

/ 1150

The dating of the foundation of the Baptistery – the ‘bel S. Giovanni’ evoked by Dante in the nineteenth Canto of Inferno – still hovers, in the opinion of scholars, between the Late Antique and Romanesque periods. We do know, however, that in 1150 the building was crowned by the lantern, the small structure in the form of an aedicula that allows light into the interior. The refinement of its architecture and the role reserved for the building – containing the city’s only baptismal font – made the Baptistery the symbol of Florence and its civic pride for centuries.
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The boom period

Cardinal Latino Malabranca lays the foundation stone of the new Santa Maria Novella

/ 1279

The solemn re-founding of the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, which was to become one of the largest churches in Florence, testifies to the importance rapidly achieved in city life by the Order of Preachers and other mendicant orders. Their churches became the new monumental landmarks of the medieval city, covered squares that could welcome crowds of worshippers, and into whose shadow masses of new citizens were attracted, determining the urban and economic development of the surrounding areas.
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Major public projects

The start of construction of Santa Maria del Fiore

/ 1296

The foundation of the new cathedral, destined to replace the now unsuitable church of Santa Reparata, was the culmination of a very dynamic period for the city. Despite the destructive struggles between the opposing political factions – not only between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, but also between the aristocratic elite of the Magnati and the artisan classes of the Popolani – Florence succeeded in realising a number of ambitious public projects. Indeed, the Santa Maria del Fiore project would dominate the city scene for the next 140 years.
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The city’s resistance to crises

The Arno floods Florence

/ 1333

On 4 November 1333, after days of heavy rain and flooding of the countryside, the Arno invaded Florence. According to the fourteenth-century chronicler Giovanni Villani, the Arno receded the next day, ‘leaving the city and all the streets and houses and shops […] full of water and stinking mud, which could not be cleared in six months’, as well as a lasting memory of the disaster. The Municipality reacted, ordering the repair of the damage and entrusting Giotto, in 1334, with responsibility for the great public building sites.
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The conquest of a new image

The construction site for the cupola of S. Maria del Fiore is completed

/ 1436

After sixteen years of work, the dome of the Florentine cathedral finally reached completion, realising the long-cherished project of building a work of dimensions never achieved since Antiquity, expressing the city’s ambitions of power. Leon Battista Alberti celebrated it together with its builder, Filippo Brunelleschi, describing it with a famous literary image: ‘so great a structure, so high above the heavens, so wide as to cover all the peoples of Tuscany with its shadow’.
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Between republic and principality

Florence is besieged by Imperial troops

/ 1529

In October 1529, after months of fear and preparations accompanying their slow approach to the city, the imperial and papal militias laid siege to Florence. Numerous and varied, the army of the besiegers occupied the plain and the hills surrounding the city, making great use of artillery, which was largely neutralised by the fortifications set up in the meantime. These works changed the layout of parts of the city but were not enough to save it.
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The prince’s city

Francesco de’ Medici marries Joanna of Austria

/ 1565

In 1565, the wedding of Cosimo’s eldest son, Francesco dei Medici, to Joan of Habsburg took place. To celebrate the wedding, ephemeral structures and permanent projects were realised, including the corridor between Palazzo Vecchio and Boboli. Giorgio Vasari built it in just nine months, as a unifying element of an architectural system on an urban scale and at the same time as a covered street elevated above the city, from which the duke could observe his domain without being seen.
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Urban scenography

Celebration of the wedding of Prince Cosimo de’ Medici and Maria Maddalena of Austria

/ 1608

The marriage of Cosimo de’ Medici to Maria Maddalena of Austria was the occasion for solemn celebrations, which took place in a Florence transformed into a grand stage. The future Grand Duchess arrived at Palazzo Pitti along streets decorated with temporary decorations, and receptions and performances followed one after the other over the next few days. The settings for many performances were the city squares and streets, as well as the Arno between the bridges at Santa Trinita and Carraia, by now one of the central points of the urban scene.
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Florence in the age of reform

Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, becomes Grand Duke of Tuscany

/ 1737

On the death of the last Medici Grand Duke, Gian Gastone, an agreement signed between the great European powers assigned the Grand Duchy to Francis I, husband of Maria Theresa of Austria, which saw the House of Lorraine joined to the House of Habsburg. The couple entered Florence two years later, in 1739, and stayed in the city for only a few months. The event was celebrated with the construction of the triumphal arch outside Porta San Gallo, but the new Grand Duke’s disinterest in his capital was also reflected in urban policy.
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The city between empire and restoration

Work begins on the formation of Tuscany’s first cadastral map

/ 1810

Napoleon had a plan to create a cadastral map, that is, a survey based on a cartographic description of the territory, of the entire Empire, and he included the Grand Duchy in this. The long and complex work was interrupted with the end of French rule over Tuscany but was resumed by the Grand Dukes and concluded in 1834. An extraordinary document, the Catasto Generale Toscano describes the urban structure of Florence in great detail, before the great urban operations of the second half of the nineteenth century.
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The capital city

Florence becomes capital of the Kingdom of Italy

/ 1865

The choice of Florence as the new capital of the Kingdom of Italy came about suddenly, following the convention signed with France in September 1864. Within a few months, the government offices were transferred from Turin and a plan was drawn up to enlarge the city, which was too small to accommodate the state bureaucrats and their families. Florence thus lost its walls, which for centuries had shaped it, establishing the boundary between city and country.
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Growth beyond the city limits

The administrative borders of Florence are extended

/ 1928

After the annexation of a series of territories outside the walls in 1865 to allow for the expansion of the city that had become the capital of Italy, the second major enlargement of the municipal boundaries took place in 1928, encompassing vast areas of neighbouring municipalities. The enlargement followed the demographic and industrial development of the city, which tended to fill the space circumscribed by the hills and to encroach haphazardly on the plain to the west of the centre.
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War and flood

The Arno floods Florence

/ 1966

After days of bad weather, the Arno flooded the centre of Florence and many parts of the surrounding plain on 4 November 1966. The damage to the city’s urban and cultural heritage was enormous. Cimabue’s Crucifix, disfigured by water and mud in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Croce, became the symbol of the damage inflicted on the city, but also of its rebirth. The work was restored using innovative techniques, and Florence once again became the centre of international attention.
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Florence World Heritage Site

The ancient centre of Florence is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site

/ 1982

Ten years after the World Cultural and Natural Heritage Convention, adopted by UNESCO on 16 November 1972, the ancient city centre of Florence was added to the World Heritage List. The entry recognises the outstanding universal value of Florence, which the city has a duty to transmit to future generations.
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The area of the current centre of Florence is already inhabited.

/ 750 a.C.

Caesar enacts an agrarian law which is followed by the foundation of Florentia.

/ 59 a.C

Florentia is reached by the new route of the Via Cassia

/ 123 d.C.

Ambrose consecrates the church of San Lorenzo

/ 394

Totila besieges Florentia

/ 542

Willa, Marchioness of Tuscia, founds the Abbey of Santa Maria

/ 978

The lantern at the top of the Baptistery of S. Giovanni is constructed

/ 1150

Cardinal Latino Malabranca lays the foundation stone of the new Santa Maria Novella

/ 1279

The start of construction of Santa Maria del Fiore

/ 1296

The Arno floods Florence

/ 1333

The construction site for the cupola of S. Maria del Fiore is completed

/ 1436

Florence is besieged by Imperial troops

/ 1529

Francesco de’ Medici marries Joanna of Austria

/ 1565

Celebration of the wedding of Prince Cosimo de’ Medici and Maria Maddalena of Austria

/ 1608

Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, becomes Grand Duke of Tuscany

/ 1737

Work begins on the formation of Tuscany’s first cadastral map

/ 1810

Florence becomes capital of the Kingdom of Italy

/ 1865

The administrative borders of Florence are extended

/ 1928

The Arno floods Florence

/ 1966

The ancient centre of Florence is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site

/ 1982