Category: History

Feb 26, 2024

The highest man in the world …

That's right, Florence also holds this record .... obviously I am kidding but not entirely. We take a step back and precisely in the years 1764-1766, when the HMS Dolphin (Delfino) of the Royal Navy commanded by Captain John Byron managed to circumnavigate the terrestrial globe, a company that is not really easy for those times. The deeds of the English captain Byron impressed the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo, especially those who told the events of the people of Patagonia, inhabited by gigantic beings. The first Europeans to meet this population of giants were the Portuguese of Ferdinando Magellano and the description of this meeting was written by an Italian .... Antonio Pigafetta one of the few survivors returned home from the long journey. This is the report of the meeting with the giants of Patagonia from the book published in 1524 "" ... starting from here we reach up to 49 degrees to the Antarctic.

Feb 25, 2024

Origin of first Italian vocabulary

Next to the Palagio di Parte Guelfa and precisely in the building belonging to the Cavalcanti family in the thirteenth century in […]

Feb 25, 2024

Chinese New Year festival in Florence

The event will be held on February 25th at Piazzale Michelangelo from 14 to 18 at the end of the celebrations for the new Chinese New Year. The initiative is sponsored by the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Florence and in collaboration with the Municipality of Florence.

Feb 23, 2024

Royal Postal Office becoming a restaurant

The royalty placed after three and a half years of accurate restorations are reborn. The nineteenth -century environments of the royalty placed on the ground floor of the Vasarian complex and behind the Loggia dei Lanzi, are ready to host the Uffizi restaurant. The announcement is on the launch pad, the menu already defined. While waiting to know the name of the chef, the end of the restorations was celebrated in the presence of the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano.

Feb 22, 2024

Royal Postal office of Florence

If you go to the Uffizi square and targe in the direction of the Arno on your right you will see after the construction site of the new Uffizi the door with the real post office. Once in that area there was a building where the famous gold "florin" was coined inside. But the architect Giorgio Vasari with extreme care in architectural details incorporated this structure in the Uffizi building creating a continuity of the entire body. As we subsequently know, the complex became the headquarters of the bureaucratic body of the new Grand Duke Cosimo I, but despite having passed several centuries, the function of the building as part of the Medici offices changed only in its new operational qualification.

Feb 21, 2024

Strolling Along: The Elegance of a Florence City Tour on Foot

Why rush? You can certainly appreciate more by taking it slow with a Florence city tour on foot. Here's what you don't want to miss out on.

Feb 20, 2024

Breakfast at the Museum – The shops of science

At the Museum of Scanza Galileo Galilei, the exhibition of the artisans of Florence continues throughout the month of February and March. All weekends will be the practical exhibition, school of Florentine artisans. Activities aimed at young people and adults, focused on the recovery of the memory of ancient artisan techniques.During the workshops - lasting about 90 minutes - the participants will attend practical demonstrations and at the end they will receive a useful guide to be able to repeat the activities carried out independently. The meeting for the booked is at 10.30 am at the ticket office. Before starting the activity, the museum will offer participants a tasty breakfast provided by the Caffetteria del Grano, Piazza del Grano 4, Florence, thanks to the support of Opera Laboratories Florentine.

Feb 19, 2024

Leggend of San Pietro Martire and the Devil

The restoration works of the external part of the Loggia del Bigallo in Piazza San Giovanni are finished: the first part of the interventions that will allow the Bigallo to return to shine in the center of Florence. On this occasion, now it is possible to see again the fresco that is located on the first floor of the history of San Pietro Martire and the devil. The Loggia del Bigallo was built between 1353 and 1358 instead of the Torre degli Adimari house, driven out of Florence during the wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines. The loggia was built for the Bigallo company and for the Compagnia della Misericordia, two institutions founded by San Pietro Martire who dealt with orphaned and abandoned children. The name "Bigallo" derives from two cockerels on the company's coat of arms. According to the legend, the loggia rises at the point of the miracle that St. Peter Martyr made in Florence.

Feb 18, 2024

Lenoard and its idea to lift up the Baptistery

asari writes in 1550 about Leonardo: «And among these models and drawings there was one, with which several times ingenious citizens who then governed Fiorenza, showed wanting to raise the temple of San Giovanni di Fiorenza, and submit the stairs there without rearing it; And with so strong reasons it persuaded him, who seemed possible, although each, then that he had started, knew for himself the impossibility of a cotant company ". In reality, Leonardo's project already had precedents: a few years earlier, in 1455, the Bolognese engineer and architect Aristotile Fioravanti (c. 1415-1486) with rollers, beams and Martinetti, had successfully moved a tower in Bologna . The latter had among other things worked for Leonardo's friends or clients, such as the Bentivoglio, King Mattia Corvino of Hungary and Cosimo de ’Medici (between 1458 and 1467 in Florence). Leonardo's project provided to raise the baptistery on four steps, as can be seen in a design attributed to Francesco Granacci (which is preserved in the cabinet drawings and prints of the Uffizi)

Feb 17, 2024

The Arch in Piazza della Repubblica

The massive structure, constructed in 1895 as part of an architect Vincenzo Micheli project, is referred to as the picturesque fifth of the square; its history dates back to 1883, when the Jewish ghetto and ancient market were demolished. The architecture of the palace goes beyond its function as a civilian residential building in the bourgeois sense. It becomes a monumental urban sign that imposes itself for the large arcone that he enters through Strozzi. The facades of the side buildings are developed to understand the two orders that each develop for six additional axes, the last of which are in the argument. Following that, each of these lateral bodies grows thoroughly in its own isolation, on two internal brief that go to the route Brunelleschi, and on one of an elongated shape towards via Pellicceria.

Explore cities