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Medieval Florence - Housing

Middle class families lived in houses set on narrow lots of land and developed in depth.
The residential and commercial (bottega) or artisan (workshop) functions were closely integrated.
The individual building was three to five stories high, and the width of the facade corresponded to the entrance of the dwelling plus the opening for the shop, for a minimum width fixed by the Statutes in nine braccia (cubits), circa 5.22 m.

These typologically distinct houses were often remodelled externally in subsequent centuries but the structural layout and ground plan remained unchanged. They still characterize many streets in the area between the last two circuits of walls.

The ordinary houses of the working class were often of wood up to the middle of the thirteenth century, easily fell prey to fire and demolition.

Brickwork then came into use for the entire structure, or for the upper floors above a ground floor faced in stone. The brick masonry was either left as it was or covered with plaster; later, in the fifteenth century, on economic and aesthetic grounds plaster was preferred, leaving the stone for the structural details.

External staircases were frequent in olden times - for public palaces as well - but in the fourteenth century they began to disappear. In the palaces they were a[most always situated in the courtyards under the ground floor loggia or, where there was none, near the door leading to the street (scala di via).

Private wells were fairly numerous in the late fourteenth century palaces (Palazzo Minerbetti, Canigiani in Via dei Bardi, Davanzati), but the common wells inside the city blocks or the public wells in the squares and at the intersections were still of fundamental importance.

HOUSES WITH OVERHANGING STORIES
While the first examples date back to the tenth century, the house with an overhanging story (sporto) continued to develop through the centuries and by the beginning of the fourteenth century had become quite common.
In the thirteenth century ordinances were already being emanated prohibiting new ones from being built and ordering those extant to be torn down.
Many of these houses with overhangs were destroyed as a result of sixteenth-century provisions and the nineteenth-century demolition of the center.
Originally these overhangs were probably meant to be defensive structures (they may have been a transformation of the machicolations). Subsequently they became a means of enlarging the rooms on the upper floors; initially they would have been used for the top stories of the house and then gradually moved down to the point where a statute of 1325 established the minimum height of the impost at five cubits (circa 2.40 m.)
Various types of structures for these overhangs have been identified by examining the principal part or the supporting element (bracket):
1. timber struts under a timber architrave (sergozzone); this was the oldest solution with examples found in Via della Canonica;
2. timber struts under a stone architrave;
3. stone struts with a stone architrave;
4. stone brackets with pointed stone arches; examples are to be seen on the back of a house overlooking the Arno in Via dei Bardi and in the Palazzo Salviati on the corner of Via della Vigna Vecchia and Isola delle Stinche;
5. stone corbels with stone architraves;
6. stone brackets of various shape with brick vaulting (round arched, segmental, depressed, with a pier); a late and common type (Palazzo Ricasoli in Piazza Goldoni, houses in Via Toscanella).

The hypothesis has been advanced "that many of those buildings which in the lower part up to a certain height, on the first and also on the second floor, are in stone ashlars and have rough plastered masonry on the upper floors, as well as those which have windows framed with sixteenth, seventeenth or eighteenth-century surrounds on the upper part, can be considered old ‘overhang’ houses where this elements has been torn down; or where a careful examination of the masonry on the lower parts reveals the traces of the corbels or brackets that have been destroyed" (P. Moschella).

The technique of overhang building was also used in the houses lining the river. Some examples can still be seen in the stretch of the river near the apse of S. Jacopo Sopr'Amo as well as in the shops on Ponte Vecchio.

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