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Medieval Florence - The City

As early as the second half of the thirteenth century, the towers were losing their original function in terms of war, and were being transformed.
The ground floor might be turned into a shop and the upper stories were used as warehouses or storage rooms.

In the last quarter of the thirteenth century and the early fourteenth a new typology of the palace-fortress took shape, with characteristics which on the one hand could still be related to the architecture of the towers and on the other to the great public palaces.

The most outstanding examples of palaces of this period include the formidable enormous Palazzo Mozzi (built between 1260 and 1273), where Gregory X was lodged in 1273 as the most noble building in the entire city; the Palazzo Frescobaldi and the Palazzo Spini, which stand across from each other at either end of the Ponte S. Trinita, respectively on this and on that side of the Arno, and were occupied as inexpugnable fortifications of the bridge by Charles of Valois in 1301; the Palazzo Ruggerini, later Gianfigliazzi, between Piazza S. Trinita and the bridge of S. Trinita.

The Peruzzi palace built around 1283 on the ruins of the Roman amphitheater near Porta S. Simone in the next to last circuit of walls; the Del Bempo palace, later Bezzoli and Martelli in Via Cerretani, corner of Piazza dell'Olio.
Several of them were located in dominating and disengaged positions, such as for example the Mozzi, Frescobaldi, Spini, Gianfigliazzi palaces.
Many were restructured in the following and subsequent centuries.

Palazzo Davanzati, built by the Davizzi around 1330, is an important and well-preserved example of what the palace as a type had become before the demographic crisis in the middle of the fourteenth century.

Palazzo Alessandri in Borgo degli Albizi; Palazzo Salviati-Quaratesi in Via Ghibellina, Via M. Palmieri, with depressed arches on the ground floor where warehouses and shops were installed, built with rubblework in the upper part and courses of rusticated pietra forte ashlars on the first two floors.

Palazzo Canigiani-Bardi, built in the late fourteenth century on the street that took the name of the Bardi family, all mark the passage to a larger structure and a more sweeping design with proportions which herald the fifteenth-century renewal of architecture.

The palaces which stood in the center, in the compact early medieval framework, were smaller with fewer and narrower rooms inside and with a much smaller courtyard (Palazzo Davanzati, Spini), or with none at all; the ones which stood in less central areas, where land was more readily available and less expensive, were more spacious and sometimes also included a green space.

Not till early in the fifteenth century, with the Busini-Bardi palace in Via dei Benci, attributed by some to Brunelleschi, did the courtyards begin to be regular or spacious in design.
The ground floor of the palace facade was much higher than the upper floors, built of ashlars in which the vertical joints alternated from one course to the next.
Small windows with iron grates were rare but there were often large arched openings which gave access to the warehouses or the shops. The upper floors (two or three) were in stone rubble, at the most with more regular ashlars around the windows, which had segmental arches.
The stringcourses between the floors, simple and of no great importance, were often but not always present (there are none for example on the Castellani or Peruzzi palaces).

In the Trecento the family dwelling generally consisted of five or six rooms; with no more than thirteen or fourteen in the larger dwellings. The most important rooms were on the first floor; the various services were on the floor below and on those above.

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