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The Building of Residential Palaces 1560 under The Grand Duke, Florence

The sixties witnessed interesting developments in the field of urban residences. New palaces were built: almost all for Cosimo's courtiers, Francesco's favorites or people, in some way linked to the government. On the one hand these palaces were qualified according to the functional and official needs of the grand duchy's socio-political and cultural climate; on the other, consistently with those needs they were presented as inventions, focusing on the original and the exceptional.

Thus, the palace of Antonio di Mondragone, a favorite of Francesco I; the Grifoni (later Budini-Gattai, 1557-63) palace for a rich bureaucrat of the Grand Duchy, Cosimo's secretary (in fact, Cosimo's arms rather than those of the Grifoni family are over the doorway in Via dei Servi); the palace of Ramirez de Montalvo, another of Cosimo's favorites, all built by Ammannati around 1568, or the reconstruction of the Portinari-Salviati palace in Via del Corso that belonged to the family of Cosimo's mother, the Sforza Almeni palace in Via dei Servi (at the corner of Via del Castellaccio); and the Usimbardi palace on the Lungarno.

Residential buildings were planned almost like housing developments. One of the first examples in Florence seems to be the changes Cosimo ordered (1576) in the drying shop of the Arte della Lana (woolmakers' guild) on the Prato. Between 1577-84 Ammannati designed houses for the same guild in Via Alfani at the corner of Via della Pergola.
The development of residential buildings was also linked to the features that distinguished the economic life of the period. During the second half of the century, the crisis in Florentine industry-that Cosimo had skillfully reorganized years before-became accentuated for reasons related to the new international scope of problems deriving from the great geographic discoveries.

One of the effects was a tendency among the great merchants and bankers to become great landowners, and another was a growth of investments in real estate and building. This is one of the reasons that led to the construction of buildings with dwellings for rent; quite often the owners were religious orders or guilds. Other complexes of this type could be found in Via Ricasoli, Via dei Servi (on the east side between Via del Castellaccio and Piazza SS. Annunziata), Via delle Ruote, the parallel streets west of Via San Gallo, and the streets parallel to and crossing Via de' Serragli. The study of the typological solutions is one of the most interesting aspects of the structures of the cities founded by Cosimo in Tuscany.

Ammannati renovated the structural components of the building facades. Recurring elements include the importance attributed to the central line (door-balcony, crests, windows); replacement of the small, simplified Medieval and fifteenth century ground floor openings with kneeling windows thus affirming the presence of a strong "architectural figure." Buontalenti drew his inspiration from Ammannati interpreting and emulating some of these innovations for example in the portal-door-balcony composition of the Casino Mediceo.

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