Florence in the age of reform

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

/ 1737

After two centuries of rule, the Medici dynasty came to an end with the death of Gian Gastone (1737). His successor, Francis I, showed little interest in the Grand Duchy, which he governed from Vienna through a Regency Council. The need to reform every aspect of Tuscan administration and public life, in an increasing state of decay, distracted from the implementation of far-reaching town-planning projects. In the period of the Regency (1737-1765), the initiatives promoted in the urban sphere were therefore negligible, especially when compared to the actions undertaken for the reorganisation of the State, centred on the restructuring the economy and public finances, as well as reworking the grand ducal administrative apparatus. The situation did not change with Francis’s successor, his son Leopold II (1747-1792), who was much more focused on institutional reforms than on urban improvement projects.

The urban interventions of this period were limited to isolated instances, involving operations that reconverted existing buildings and architectural complexes to new functions within a consolidated urban context. Examples include the locating of the Accademia di Belle Arti in the former San Matteo hospital; the new headquarters of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure; and theatres built within an already consolidated building fabric.

Public green spaces were also expanded. Outside Porta San Gallo, Leopold had the Parterre, a vast ‘French-style’ public garden with gravel paths and rows of elms, created between 1767 and 1768. Other public landscaped promenades along the outside of the walls were also established, and the Boboli Gardens were opened to the public.

In 1785, Leopold also ordered the suppression of all lay confraternities in the Grand Duchy. Often of ancient origin, the confraternities made up a complex of devotional institutions that combined religious purposes with important charitable functions. Their offices, scattered throughout the city – there were more than 150 in Florence in 1783 – acted as a system of spiritual and social protection for the less privileged, but this was dismantled by Leopold in favour of a network of parishes, to which the duties of assistance but also the assets of the suppressed confraternities were transferred.

Despite an undeniable increase in population, during the reign of the first two ‘outsider’ Grand Dukes, Florence remained entirely within the fourteenth-century city walls. There were no villages outside the gates save hamlets of just a few buildings, a far cry from the agglomerations that existed until the time of the siege of 1529-30. Within the walls, the general condition of the town was not very dissimilar to that in which the founder of the Grand Duchy, Cosimo I, had left it. The urban structure and city spaces remained substantially unchanged, and even the extension and layout of the building fabric were very close to those seen in the sixteenth century. The belt of vegetable gardens and gardens between the urban core and the ring of fortifications was also preserved almost intact.

The nature of residential building, however, began to change. Until the mid-eighteenth century, Florentine houses generally consisted of narrow, elongated buildings, developed on two or at most three floors above ground level – so-called terraced houses – containing one or two residential units. In the second half of the century, there was a growing tendency to merge two or more terraced houses to form buildings with two or more apartments on each floor, served by a single common staircase. The transformation of single-family terraced houses into multi-family blocks was generally accompanied by a rise in height and the reconfiguration of façades, where simple arched windows were systematically replaced by rectangular openings with fairly elaborate frames.