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Medieval Florence - The Building of the City- Arnolfo di Cambio

Arnolfo di Cambio's work
The mark left by Arnolfo di Cambio (1232-1302) was and is still evident in the medieval city. Whether or not what he did and planned in Florence was part of a real pre-established plan, he seems to have been aware that his works comprised the primary elements of a new city.

The opportunity for creating a new organizational and formal unity inside the new circle of walls, probably Arnolfo's first work, presented itself.
The space these walls defined established a dimension with respect to which the scale and the compact unrelenting definition of the pre-existing center with the Baptistery and S. Reparata and the recent Palazzo del Podesta' as the only monumental public elements of note were inconsistent.

Every primary element of the projected urban structure had to be referred to that dimension.
Given a situation of this sort two types of intervention were basic to Arnolfo's vision: the recovery of preexistent elements and their transformation into primary elements in line with the new scale (Badia, S. Croce); the ex novo creation of primary elements commensurate in size 'and scale.

The organization according to poles which had begun in the second decade of the thirteenth century with the activity of the urban Orders was thus taken up once more and recuperated in a precise order of functions and meanings.

At the outskirts of the central nucleus contained within Matilda's walls, the monumental complexes Cathedral-Baptistery, Palazzo dei Priori, Badia-Bargello assumed a dimension and a qualification so that seen as a whole they formed a central system with respect to the city that extended as far as the new walls.

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