Mar 3, 2024The Palazzo delle Cento Finestre, already known as Palazzo del Centauro, is located in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore in Florence. On four sides, in fact, a number of openings of just under one hundred is placed. In this site there were in ancient times the houses of the hesses, of the Carnesecchi and perhaps of the Martini. At the end of the fifteenth century numerous of these buildings were purchased by Michele di Carlo Strozzi, but only at the beginning of the eighteenth century a real noble palace was built, probably since 1720. In 1744 Giuseppe Zocchi already included a view of the «Palazzo del Sig . Marquis Strozzi, of the centaur, and the road that leads to S. M. Novella »in the famous series of engravings of views of Florence. The «Centauro» appellation derives from the fact that at the time the sculptural group of Giambologna di Ercole with Centauro Nesso was located in front of the building, at the song of the Carnesecchi, where they converged via dei Cerretani, via Panzani, via de 'Rondinelli and via dei Banchi, and only just before the mid -nineteenth century was he moved to the Loggia dei Lanzi.
