MAPS OF FLORENCE
 

aaEnglish Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello, is green oval top right

Elizabeth Barrett Browning twice describes the silver arrow of the Arno River shooting through the city of Florence. In Casa Guidi Windows I.52-59

    I can but muse in hope upon this shore
      Of golden Arno as it shoots away
    Straight through the heart of Florence, 'neath the four
      Bent bridges, seeming to strain off like bows,
    And tremble, while the arrowy undertide
      Shoots on and cleaves the marble as it goes,
    And strikes up palace-walls on either side,
      And froths the cornice out in glittering rows,
    With doors and windows quaintly multiplied,
       And terrace-sweeps, and gazers upon all,
    By whom if flower or kerchief were thrown out
      From any lattice there, the same would fall
    Into the river underneath no doubt,
      It runs so close and fast, 'twixt wall and wall.
    How beautiful.

And in Aurora Leigh VII.534-537:

                                            Beautiful
   The city lay along the ample vale,
    Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street,
    The river trailing like a silver cord
    Through all, and curling loosely, both before
    And after, over the whole stretch of land
    Sown whitely up and down its opposite slopes
    With farms and villas.

1* Duomo/Cathedral +; 2* Campanile di Giotto/ Giotto's Bell Tower; 3* Battistero/ Baptistry +; 4 Casa di Dante/ Dante's House; 5 Colonna dell'Abbondanza/ Column of Plenty in Piazza della Repubblica; 6 Badia/ Abbey Church +; 7* Bargello; 8* Palazzo Vecchio/ People's Palace; 9 Loggia dei Lanzi o dell'Orcagna; 10* Galleria degli Uffizi/ Uffizi Gallery; 11* Ponte Vecchio/ Old Bridge; 12* Orsanmichele +; 13 Poste e Telegrafi/ Post Office; 14 Palazzo Strozzi/ Strozzi Palace; 16 Palazzo Ferroni Spini; 17* Chiesa di Santa Maria Novella +; 18 Stazione Centrale/ Santa Maria Novella Station; 20* Chiesa di San Lorenzo e Capella Medicea/ Basilica of San Lorenzo +, Medici Tombs/ Laurentian Library (this last is in the cloister and upstairs, entered on the left from the church); 21*Palazzo Medici Riccardi with Benozzo Gozzoli Chapel; 22* Cenacolo di S. Apollonia (a free museum with magnificent fresco of Last Supper) +; 23* Accademia di Belle Arti; 24* Chiesa e Museo di San Marco/ Church and Museum of San Marco +; 25* Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata and Ospedale degli Innocenti +; 26* Chiesa di Santa Croce +; 27 Biblioteca Nazionale; 28 Giardino di Boboli; 29 Palazzo Pitti; 30 Chiesa di Santo Spirito +; 31 Chiesa del Carmine +; 32* Museo di Storia delle Scienza; 34 Teatro Communale; 35 Fortezza da Basso; 37 Piazzale Michelangelo; 38 Forte di Belvedere; 39 Sinagoga; 41* Chiesa di Ognissanti +

                                                                                               English Cemetery
                                                                                               Piazzale Donatello

Before the Risorgimento, Florence's walls and city gates, built first by Arnolfo di Cambio, then by Michelangelo, had enclosed her. This map shows Florence as it was in the earlier nineteenth century, from Augustus Hare's Florence:

                                                                                 Protestant Cemetery
                                                                                 Before 1877

And now, Vasari's painting of Renaissance Florence as we go back through time:

Michelini painted this of exiled Dante teaching the Commedia to Renaissance Florence outside of whose walls he stands with his great Book. The painting is displayed within the Duomo, showing the Duomo self-referentially, and also the Badia and the Palazzo Vecchio. The city gate would have been like that of the now demolished Porta a' Pinti by the Protestant Cemetery.

Wedding chests in the Renaissance were painted with such scenes as this, of the Banners of the Procession of San Giovanni, showing the Baptistry.

And here, in the 1342 Bigallo painting of the Madonna of Misericordia, with all Florence under her cloak, the Baptistry and the Badia both faced by Arnolfo di Cambio in black and white marble, with Orsanmichele and Arnolfo di Cambio's Palazzo Vecchio, then the 'Palazzo del Popolo', until the Medici became Princes of Florence's former proud Republic.

For more images of the Bigallo Madonna delle Misericordia see http://www.florin.ms/bigallo.html

In the Middle Ages, Lorenzetti showed Florence in this painting as Saint Umiltà approaches it from Faenza. He painted it circa 1316. Here we see the Baptistery's previous roof, with the colour scheme of white marble, red terracotta, as was the Duomo's to be, and beyond it the Badia and the Bargello. It seems that the Badia's steeple was forever falling, forever being rebuilt.

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