Life in the City of Florence in 19th Century
In spite of the apparent efficiency of its 'splendid isolation', Florence was a city that had aged profoundly as far as its structures and services were concerned, partly because it was gradually growing, without opening. During his sojourn in Florence Leopardi wrote to Giordani expressing an opinion that was perhaps excessive and rendered even more bitter because of his health: "These alleys they call streets are strangling me, the universal filth is making me sick".
The urban and structural transformations that had been done during the last fifty years of the grand duchy should be considered single, scattered and disconnected episodes; apparently cautious and each one, in general, prompted by new needs, were the bases that affected the entire subsequent process of transformation through their influence" (E. Detti, 1970).
In the early nineteenth century Florence was "complete" in shape, dimensions and structures that had been stable for centuries. Stendhal wrote the following in 1817: "Luckily for the beauty of Florence, with liberty her inhabitants lost the energy needed to raise big buildings. Thus the eye is not disturbed by those horrible façades à la Piermarini, and nothing troubles the beautiful harmony of those streets where one can breathe the ideal of the Middle Ages. In twenty spots in Florence, for example coming off the Ponte della Trinita and passing in front of Palazzo Strozzi the traveler can believe that he is in the sixteenth century."
The city was perfect in its form, complete within the walls and focused on basic features such as the dome and other famous monuments, alive in the continuous equilibrium between the constructed parts and the parks and gardens, that were increasingly larger and more numerous as one went from the center towards the walls. The transformation was slow. The city's life, in the typical provincial manner that feels the effects of the era's great events from afar, was characterized by a minor, subdued tone.
To understand the scope we must not overlook the small anecdotal things of daily life. A tour around the walls could reveal many things. Among the built-up areas that here and there already touched the walls, the city's appearance was still old. Here the air smelled of the earth and country, with the narrow sun-filled streets between stuccoed walls, with long stretches that were not broken by transverse streets.
It was an environment that had already disappeared and could only be felt in Via delle Casine or Borgo Allegri or some secondary street in the Oltrarno (right bank) district. Two roads ran along the walls (both known as "Via Lungo le Mura", the 'street along the walls'): one external, flanked by vineyards and vegetable gardens, the other internal, "melancholy ... on which evening fell early: a street dear to lovers" (G. Picchi, 1934).
Along the walls, horses were brought to be broken, the ropemakers made their wares. At the end of Via della Mattonaia came the painters, mixers and carpenters to make paints that could not be done in the city because of the danger of explosions. In the same out of the way and deserted area the hoopers made the rims for cart wheels.
The long moats along the outside of the walls, between Porta a Pinti and Porta San Gallo, cold because of the long shadows were used to store ice and in the winter children played on them. In other places were the tannery, the candle factory and a stable. In the open spaces near the gates the Florentines let loose their old passion for ball games.
The gates were closed every night until 1848. Every morning, the line of carts formed before the main gate; the first in line were the milkmen and grocers. Inside the walls, life was more or less that of a large village, with the horse and yearling markets in the dust of Piazza Pitti, and the daily straw and coal market in Piazza Santa Maria Novella.
In Piazza Santa Croce the tanners spread skins so they could dry. In 1816 the straw market was moved from the Logge di San Paolo to the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo. In 1810 the firewood market (coal, pine cones, bundles of kindling, etc.) was held on the eastern side of Piazza del Duomo. Large fairs were held at the city gates on Sundays during Lent.
"In the summer the streets of the entire square of the city center that constituted the Market, were covered with tents of every color, yellow oil cloth, trellises and mats, in an extraordinary melee of colors, shapes and patches, that could tire any imagination, and immediately bring to desperation any artist who would have wanted to reproduce that strange picture, filled with life, motion and local color".
"In the common families, as in the noble ones, it was customary to bake bread at home, and throughout the city one could see the bakers' boys who left the houses carrying boards on their heads covered with woolen cloth" (G. Conti, 1899). There were many street vendors. Along the Arno where home gardens reached the river, public baths alternated with public parks.
The many cafés (the oldest was Panone in Via Por Santa Maria, that Goldoni himself had frequented) drew all the social classes. They were the meeting places as were the early clubs, mainly the "Casino di Firenze" that had been inaugurated by Leopoldo II in 1844 in the rooms of Palazzo Aldobradini Borghese in Via Ghibellina (fig. 26). Theaters, public and private were scattered throughout the city, and even attached to convents or school. But the street iself was often a theater for acrobats and jugglers.
The urban scene, like that of the surroundings seemed to reflect a closed atmosphere, of expectation that pervaded every episode and can be found in every surviving period document. Just think of the lights in the later paintings by Giovanni Fattori or Giuseppe Abbati. The light that invades the streets and beats on the walls of the Tuscan countryside, and even on those of the city. The dust raised by the carts settled, transforming the light into a blinding reflection in which things seem to arrange themselves ready for a long, patient wait.
Dust was a component of the urban scene, along with the signs that covered the façades and the first mechanical noises in the streets. This is what the Browning poets, Elizabeth (the dust here is like the fog in London) and Robert (What I can say is that I will love the dust of Florence, the letters that make up its name... And I truly feel love for the dust in the streets of Florence), wrote in some letters.
Something new was added to the Florentine environment with the opening of the Cascine park. "It is the sense of the perfectly level that [...] fits into the soul and history of our city" (A. Guidi, 1957). The nature that was elaborated and constructed over the past centuries, the Renaissance gardens that were never bare, that were always a bit of piazza or courtyard, were replaced by the romantic vegetation of the great park that created the sensation and pleasure of being able to imagine it as infinite.
Even the qualification of Piazza Maria Antonia, the first nineteenth century square in Florence was significant in history of the urban landscape. The evenness of the piazza, the vast, flat and clean plans, broken by isolated architectural elements became reasons for tranquil and static contemplation for the observer; it corresponded to the romantic tendency towards an illusion of the infinite, realized by the fact that distant limits are always visible (fig. 24).
It was a taste that was already being affirmed, along with other components, in the vedutas by Bernardino Rosaspina or Antonio Terreni, for example, and developed more fully later in the works of the "Macchiaioli". In 1846 gas street lighting was brought into several parts of the city. Via Maggio was the first street to be illuminated in honor of the grand duke. To avoid any waste, it was established that when there was a full or nearly full moon, the lamps were to be off.
"The first gas lamps were seen in Florence in 1846: but ten years later there were still oil lamps. To light one it often took at least ten minutes and their light was meager and uncertain, so that one could believe that some streets were in total darkness. Other public services were extremely rudimentary; but it was not for this that foreigners and Italians who flocked here were any less content to be in Florence" (U. Pesci, 1904).
Rain water was not channeled vertically and splashed down the roofs into the streets. Only in 1839 did rain gutters come into use, but since there were no drains below street level, on days of heavy rainfall, the streets continued to be real streams. At the beginning of the century the streets and piazzas were cleaned by the convicts from the Stinche [prison], bound in pairs. On the backs of their uniforms (yellow for those serving life sentences, pink for shorter terms) the large lettering described their crimes. Later, the firemen were assigned to these cleaning tasks.
A review of the localization of function in 1855 shows the distribution of tools and public services created ex-novo or in the areas made available after the suppression of the religious orders during the grand duchy. These functions tended to be organized in the traditionally public buildings or in the peripheral band towards the walls, especially in the Medici area, between Via Larga and Borgo Pinti, north of Via Alfani, an area that was traditionally a major route.
In the district between Via San Gallo, Borgo Pinti and the line of the next-to-the-last circle (Via dei Pucci - Via Bufalini) large charitable institutions were concentrated (the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova and Bonifazio, etc.) large schools, offices (governmental and others), barracks, large palazzos (Capponi, Della Gherardesca, Pucci, etc.).
In Santa Croce there were barracks, the beggars' hospice, and prisons. With respect to the other streets that served mainly the residences, there were two very obviously fundamental roads of mixed services: Via San Gallo (hospitals, schools, offices, barracks), Via Ricasoli (schools, stables), Via Alfani, Via S. Egidio - Via dei Pucci, Via Palazzuolo, etc., in other words the streets that corresponded to the old territorial roads.
As to the Oltrarno district, the influence of the grand duke's court was evident, and led to the organization of some services and facilities around Palazzo Pitti, primarily schools and theaters.
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