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City Structure of Medieval Florence

The city that stood within the walls included:
1. The central area set on the Roman layout that was broken up or altered in early medieval times, densely built up with practically no green areas, characterized by the presence of operational centers for the city as a whole (religious, political, commercial).

2. The area between the lines of the walls built under Matilda (1078, Castello d'Altofronte, now Museo della Scienza, Via de' Castellani, Via dei Leoni, Via del Proconsolo, Piazza Duomo, Via de' Cerretani, Via Rondinelli, Via de' Tornabuoni, Borgo SS. Apostoli, Via Lambertesca) and the first walls built by the commune (1173-75; Castello dAltofronte, Via de' Vagellai, Via de' Benci, Via Verdi, Via S. Egidio, Via Bufalini, Via de' Pucci, Via Gori, Canto de' Nelli, Piazza Madonna, Via del Giglio, Via della Croce di Trebbio, Via del Moro as far as the Arno).

3. The area included between the last two circles (first and second communal walls), centered along the roads which led to the borghi or suburbs which had formed outside the first communal walls, and were organized in districts around the churches and convents that once stood outside the city.
In this area residential building consisted of houses bordering the road, in general building lots with a frontage of 4-5 meters and developed in depth; vast green areas existed in proximity to the walls in the triangles formed by the main thoroughfares which branched out from the center to the gates.

Elements that were fundamental to the structuring of the walled city were the territorial thoroughfares which naturally corresponded to the principal gates and - as far as the north-south route is concerned to the four bridges over the Arno: north-south route from Porta S. Gallo (extant in Piazza della Liberta) to Porta Romana (to be found in the square of the same name), by way of Via S. Gallo, Via de' Ginori, Borgo S Lorenzo, Via Roma, Via Por S. Maria, Ponte Vecchio Via Guicciardini, Via Romana; east-west route on this side of the Arno from the Porta alla Croce (extant in Piazza Beccaria) to Porta al Prato (extant) by way of Borgo la Croce, Borgo degli Albizi, Via del Corso, Via degli Strozzi, Via Palazzolo, the Prato.

East-west route on the other side of the Arno from Porta S. Niccolò (extant) to Porta S. Frediano (extant) by way of Via S. Niccolò, Via de' Bardi, Borgo S. Jacopo, Via S. Spirito, Borgo S. Frediano.
Installations connected with trade between territory and city sprang up along these thoroughfares and in the squares touched upon (markets and retail businesses, hotels, hospitals (spedali), public baths, etc.).
The principal poles that centered around the churches of the religious orders which settled in the city in the thirteenth century (S. Maria Novella, S. Croce, SS. Annunziata - S. Marco, S. Spirito ecc.) were inserted in the vast areas in between and the internal network of streets was determined by the dwellings in the district.

The structural configuration summarily described above can still be seen today: the successive perimeters of city walls and the routes leading from gate to gate are clearly visible in the grid of streets, of which they constitute fundamental elements, and the density of buildings in the various zones can also be discerned, apart from the nineteenth-century sectors of saturation and substitution (the square of the western sector of the central nucleus defined by Via Roma, Calimala, Porta Rossa, Tomabuoni, de' Pecori).

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