ORSANMICHELE: between history and legend

THE LEGEND

Once upon a time in Florence, lived a Young man called Michele who dedicated his life to his work and to charity works he did around the neighborhood, he had such a good heart that people had started to call him “San Michele”.
He owned a stable and horses and above that there was a warehouse that he used for grain storage. In fact, every day he and his father collected the grain from the citizens, transported it to the mills along the Arno river with the help of his horses and grinded it into flour that he later returned to his clients.
One day Michele died of a sudden death, leaving behind not only a grieving family and friends, but an entire neighborhood that gathered in mourning for his funerals.
After his death strange things started to happen. At night the horses whinnied in the stables, upset for no apparent reason, and in the mornings they were found freshly groomed and cleaned near mangers full of hay. Michele often appeared in his father’s dreams asking him to build a church in his memory, on the place where his house stood.
Then one day one of the horses injured his leg, and when they removed its horseshoe the hoof of the animal fell to the ground as if cut off clean, without leaving behind a wound. Even more, when they decided to kill the horse, the animal suddenly put its stomp near the fallen hoof and this miraculously reattached itself to the leg.
The bystanders realized this bust have been Michele’s doing, and in the light of these events his father finally decided to build the church, just as his son had asked him to do in his dreams. This took the name of “San Michele in Orto”, because the house in place of which it was built was originally surrounded by vegetable gardens that were commonly known at the time as Orti di San Michele.

THE HISTORY

There you have it. This is the legend that tells the origin of the Orsanmichele church, one of the most peculiar buildings of the city.
We like this story very much even if it’s hard to believe the facts narrated really happened.
What we know for sure is that until the XII century this area was surrounded by the San Michele vegetable gardens and a little church and oratory stood in the middle of them. The Church had been built around the 750 a.C. by the Lombard and by the 1240 it stood abandoned. It was therefore decided to use it as a place for commerce of grains. A loggia was built outside to allow trading in all weather conditions and above the church was also built a warehouse to store the grain that used to slid down to the ground floor through the channels carved inside the columns of the church. The holes from which the grain came out are still visible today.
What had been built to be a place of worship, and then had turned into a place of commerce and a grain storage, after the XIV returned to be a church, and a very important one as well.
It was chosen to be the sacred place for the Corporations of the Arts, and evidence of this are the many art pieces that can be found inside and outside the Orsanmichele church.
The beautiful tabernacle by Andrea Orcagna stands on the right, at the back of one of the two naves of the church, and all along the outside walls are niches with statues that represent the patron saints of each one of the Arts, sculpted by important artists of the time: among the many statues we can find the San Giorgio by Donatello, the San Tommaso by Verroccho, the San Giovanni by Lorenzo Ghiberti and the San Luca by Giambologna.
It’s undeniable, Orsanmichele is definetly one of the most interesting, although underrated, buildings in Florence. Don’t you agree?