The Gardens of Florence - Piazza dei Ciompi and its stories

A small square in the heart of the Santa Croce district. It may appear ancient, but it was actually created in the 1930s, when it was decided to demolish the area, crammed with old buildings considered unhealthy and degraded, in order to build a modern neighborhood. For these urban interventions, Fascism used the expression "the healing pickaxe". The Florentines instead called it "gutting", an eloquent term coming from butchery, already been used for the demolition of the Old Market and the Ghetto in 1885, where Piazza della Repubblica was built. Many buildings in the Santa Croce area dated back to 1500 and housed workshops of artisans and artists, including the alleged Cimabue workshop, where Giotto had worked.

The works in the area of Piazza dei Ciompi, interrupted by the war, ended in 1948 with the construction of mediocre buildings and the much discussed Palazzo della Sede Provinciale della Direzione delle Poste nearby, designed by the great architect Giovanni Michelucci. We do not want to get into the endless controversy concerning the architectural value of this building, but one thing hits the eye: the poor integration with the surrounding environment and the questionable attractiveness of the exposed raw concrete masses.

On the north side, in 1955, the Loggia del Pesce was rebuilt, a victim of the "gutting" of 1885. The Loggia was created in 1568 for the fishmongers, who were originally settled on Ponte Vecchio. They were later evicted in order to build the Vasari Corridor that connected Palazzo Pitti (home of the Grand Duke) with Palazzo Vecchio (seat of the city government).  With this elevated passage the grand dukes could move from one place to another without risking attacks, or worse, contagions during frequent epidemics. Dismantled in 19885, the pieces of the Loggia were stored in the deposits of the San Marco Museum and. In 1955 the Municipality, sponsored by the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, decided to reassemble it in Piazza dei Ciompi. 

After being the home to the Marcato delle Pulci for years, today this square has become a public park, with at its center a beautiful 80 years old pine tree measuring more than 20 meter in height and just as many in canopy diameter, and with all around orange trees.

Among the buildings on the south side of the square we find the house of Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 - 1455), sculptor, goldsmith, architect and writer, famous for the Golden Gate of Paradise in the Florence Baptistery and the statues of the Church of Orsanmichele.

The building has housed for decades the Casa del Popolo Buonarroti, named in honor of Michelangelo Buonarroti, who owned houses nearby. The Case del Popolo, linked to the left-wing political parties, were cultural associations and centers of welfare, mutual aid and recreational services, but also of work and consumer cooperatives.

The Buonarroti’s was, from the 1950s until the 1980s, one of the cultural center of the Florentine left parties. It is now home to the Study Center of ARCI Florence. The ARCI (Italian Recreational and Cultural Association), was founded in 1957 by the left-wing parties and played a fundamental role in the Italian cultural history of the second post-war period and in particular in Florence. It contains the very rich archive of all the Case del Popolo in the province, with documents, books, photos, items, posters, flags, flyers, mimeographs and all the works produced by the Florentine mutual associations. An entire documentation, a precious mine for those who will write the history of those decades.

But who were the Ciompi to whom the square is dedicated? They were the wage workers who worked the wool. The production and trade of luxury fabrics was the basis of the economic development of Florence, which together with the banks, enriched the main families, the so-called "fat people". The Ciompi worked in unthinkable conditions for us today, exploited, without any political representation and always precarious, so they revolted in 1378. Theirs, will be the first popular uprisings of economic and social nature in Europe. A class of wage workers against their masters to obtain economic and regulatory improvements and political representation in the city government. Despite a first successes gained thanks to their numbers, the revolt inevitably ended badly and the "fat people" regained power. To obtain the rights the Ciompi were asking for, we would have to wait centuries.