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Medieval Florence - The Arts or Guilds

The Arts of Guilds also determined the functional specialization of the various parts of the city, but without pre-established criteria, for what counted was the presence of facilities and equipment or large workshops.

The large residential zone of Santa Croce housed the labor force for the dyers and the tiratoi or sheds for hanging wool in Corso dei Tintori and the tanneries around S. Giuseppe (Via delle Conce).

The functional specialization of the different parts of the city, clearly distinguished in the medieval city, did not mean disintegration.
The specialization of the urban sectors moreover corresponded to the integration of place of work-residence in town planning on a microscale, which gradually began to diminish in the fifteenth century.

The headquarters of the Guilds were concentrated in the central part of the city although for quite some time most of them had no special premises of their own and gathered for meetings or proceedings in the churches, particularly those between the Mercato Vecchio and Ponte Vecchio.
Prior to the middle of the thirteenth century only a few of the most important Guilds had their own modest headquarters but many of the other Guilds acquired them after 1300.

Of those still extant mention can be made of the headquarters of the Arte della Lana (Wool Guild) on the western side of Orsanmichele (greatly restored in the early part of this century); of the Arte dei Beccai (Butchers' Guild) on the north side of the same oratory; or the later headquarters of the Arte dei Giudici e Notai (Judges and Notaries' Guild) at the corner of the street named after the guilds's proconsul and Via de' Pandolfini

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