L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 6 SIMONE SANNIO N ow adays , as you walk by the cen- turies-old lanes of Firenze, along its bridges and squares, or inside its churches and palaces, it is almost impossi- ble not to think about all the his- tory and stories that have inter- twined here in the Renaissance City. But if you had gone for a walk through Florence just a centu ry and a half ago, you would have found a completely different city, surrounded by w alls and full of clearings , orchards and gardens. Not many tourists are aware that – by the time Firenze became capital of the Kingdom of Italy between 1865 and 1871 – the city under- went a massive urban redevelop- ment that was to bring it into line with its new role: as a result, some important landmarks were destroyed, new ones were erect- ed, and the face of the city dras- tically changed. Fortunately enough, there are still some important traces of the Florence that used to be: let's find them out together! Starting in the mid-1860s and running well into the 1890s, the period of unprecedented change w e have jus t referred to is known in the history of the city by the name of Risanamento di Firenze, that is "recovery" or "regeneration". U p to that moment the medieval structure of Florence had somehow man- aged to s urvive virtually untouched: however, in 1865 it soon became clear that the age- old urban fabric of the city was definitely unfit to serve as the capital of a modern nation. The hard and honorable task of rein- venting and redefining it was as s igned to the architect Giuseppe Poggi, whose compre- hensive plan for the recovery of Florence – based on the struc- ture of other European capitals, most notably Vienna and Paris – was meant to keep the Tuscan city up with the times. As hard as it is to believe, though, there was also a dark side to this redevel- opment. The first imperative of what became known as the Poggi Plan was to provide Firenze with a series of wide, tree-lined avenues encompas s ing the w hole old town, much in the same vein as the French capital's "Grands Boulevards". But even though these new avenues, called Viali di Circonvallazione, proved to be instrumental for the city's traffic management systems – as they still are to this day – the price to pay for their construc- tion was unbelievably high. As a matter of fact, this resulted in the full demolition of Florence's ancient city walls north of the Arno River, indeed a huge loss for our artistic heritage. Luckily for us, the city gates were not only spared from that fate, they w ere enclos ed in brand new squares: for example, the Porta alla Croce in Piazza Beccaria and the Porta San Gallo in Piaz- z a della L iber tà, w here the remarkable 18 th century Tri- umphal Arch of the Lorraine still stands as well. As for the oval- shaped Cimitero degli Inglesi (Englis h Cemetery), it w as included in the newly-created Piazzale Donatello, while some of Florence's ancient towers were also left in their place: most notably, the Torre della Serpe on Viale Fratelli Rosselli and the Torre della Zecca on Viale Gio- vane Italia. Today, the most important surviving feature of the former northern walls is undoubtedly the awe-inspiring Fortezza da Basso (or Fortress of Saint John the Baptist). However, the best way to get a clear impression of how the w alled city might have looked like is probably to take a walk in the Oltrarno district and go all the way to Porta Romana, the southernmost gate. As you may notice by walking down Viale Petrarca, or – even better – the Via di Belvedere beside the Boboli Garden and the Forte di Belvedere, the Poggi Plan did not affect most of the southern city walls, still there in all their glory. On the contrary, the architect had the new avenues run all along the walls up to Porta Romana, after which the so-called Viali dei Colli climb up the hills towards San Niccolò in a scenic route that includes Poggi's absolute masterpiece, the iconic Piazzale Michelangelo. From here, as it is known, you can have the best panoramic view of Florence, but also that of its surviving walls! Needless to say, there is more to our tour of lost Florence than its ramparts: another major loss in those years was that of the Mercato Vecchio (Old Market). To find out what's left of it one only has to go to the present-day Piazza della Repubblica, where an inscription located just over the 19 th century porticoes and triumphal arch tells us how "the ancient center of the city was restored from age-old squalor to new life". Unfortunately, the restoration did not include just the removal of the shabby build- ings of the old ghetto, but it ended up destroying or displac- ing the square's medieval and Roman foundation: G iorgio Vasari's Loggia del Pesce (Fish Lodge), in particular, was dis- mantled and later relocated to Piazza dei Ciompi, while the Colonna dell'Abbondanza (Col- umn of A bundance) w as removed and then re-positioned here in 1956 as the only surviv- ing feature of the old market square. We should name at least two more of the many other changes to Florence's architecture that occurred in those years. First of all, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore – whose facade had remained unfinished for several centuries - was finally completed as we see it today according to a new project by Emilio De Fabris. In addition, one of the city's most important squares, Piazza Santa Croce, was equipped with Enrico Pazzi's famous Monu- ment to Dante Alighieri which now s tands jus t bes ide the church. Even though our present-day Firenze might not be the same as in Dante's times, all in all one finds that – w hatever the changes, the losses, the gains – the Renais s ance City has undoubtedly maintained its splendor. As for everybody's desire to know more about the city's past, the fact that – until a few years ago – there even was one Museo di Firenze com'era (Museum of the Florence that Used to Be) tells its own story. LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE Clockwise: Arno river, Fortezza da Basso, Piazza dei Ciompi In search of lost Florence, a part of the city that no longer exists

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