Observing the structure of the Vasarian corridor in the direction of Palazzo Pitti, we can see that this structure enters a tower house. This tower of the Ghibelline family of drunks was part of a series of towers placed in defense of one side of the old bridge.
The great and powerful family of drunk or Obriachi, was part of the Florentine elite of the bankers, and lived in the Oltrarno area near the Ponte Vecchio. The origin of the surname that can be traced back to the Latin word of “Ebrius” (drunk), perhaps linked to the wine trade can still be unknown. Between ups and downs of the Intestine wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the drunk family was forced to exile towards the city of Padua and Venice. The current Torre house is located in one of the poorest and most dirty villages in the city: pitiglioso, lice village.
In the passage of time, given the new homes of noble families, the village was changed in via dei Bardi. The coat of arms of the drunks was a silver goose in the red field, a heraldic symbol also remembered in the Divine Comedy, or rather in the seventeenth song of Hell where Virgil points out to Dante the workers sentenced to beings invested by a rain of fire while sitting on a Sabbione.
The high poet identifies from the bag hanging to the neck on which the family coat of arms is painted, one belonging to the Obriachi … “like red blood/showing a white goose more than butter” (vv. 62-63). After the expulsion from Florence by the drunks, the symbol of the Guelph part (red eagle that keeps the green dragon in the claws) is placed on the confiscated tower.
Unlike the Mannelli family who categorically refused to the will of Cosimo I to let the Vasarian corridor pass within his home, he found no resistance from the occupants of the Torre degli Drusto, which still passes through the structure in question. After the destruction of most of the area from the German mines of the Second World War, the tower is incorporated by the various buildings built after the war conflict.
