Precisely in this area stood the home of the Bischeri family (depicted in a painting today in the Museo dell’Opera), known for having been expropriated of all of their lands after refusing many attractive offers: hence the typical Florentine jibe tied to their name.
It is important, in any event, to note the enormous change of scale in order to understand how the area was evolving in this period.
Next to the old Santa Reparata, along the southern side, stood the dwellings of the Canons, organized around a central cloister. As revealed by documented archaeological excavations conducted in the early XX century, this cloister had already been destroyed by 1330 to make room for the elegant bell tower. In this period, the old cathedral opposite the Baptistery was indeed becoming inadequate to the image that Florence was forming of itself. In comparison to the monumental new Baptistery and the cathedrals of other cities of Tuscany and Italy, such as Pisa, Siena and Orvieto, the old Duomo of Florence was effectively modest and could not but embarrass the Florentines.
Thus the project for the new Duomo was born. Along with the Town Hall begun only a few years earlier, the new Cathedral was to have the function of expressing in architectural terms, the power and stability of the Guelph Republic of Florence.
Thus, halfway through the 1300s, a harmonious rapport had already developed between the different elements that formed the city’s holy area, crowned in this period by the Loggia del Bigallo whose structural elegance reproposed the rhythms of the Baptistery and spatially dilated the scenery, opening the nascent Piazza del Duomo onto the Corso degli Adimari which connected the religious center with the political center of Piazza dei Priori. |
