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Urban Planning in Florence 1915-1924 under Fascism

Apart from an ineffectual attempt at town planning in 1907, after “Florence, Capital of Italy”, the city’s next urban planning scheme was drawn up in 1915 by the City Council Highways Department under engineer Giovanni Bellincioni. The plan came into force in 1924, a full sixty years after the Poggi plan. This urban planning scheme, consisting largely of a cobweb-like grid of roads marking out areas for development that invaded and filled up the empty space as far as the foothills, remained in force until 1958.

It was only partially implemented in a number of sectors of the road network, but it in fact gave rise to the two largest sectors of residential expansion (to the north in the Le Cure zone and to the south east at Ricorboli) and confirmed the Le Cure sector. Most of the buildings took the form of detached town houses. The scheme also signalled the start of development of the industrial zone of Rifredi (1918) (where later the largest factories were to be built) and the hospital zone of Careggi (from 1934 onwards).

The period between the two World Wars was characterised by the repercussions at local level of the Fascist regime’s urban management and planning policies. In 1928, an old project originally produced in 1921 by Count Giulio Guicciardini and Professor Ugo Giusti in 1921 to “reclaim” the working class district of Santa Croce was reworked and presented to the Podesta by Guicciardini and architect Raffaello Fagnoni.

In 1936, demolition of a number of blocks in the area began. Work proceeded according to a city council plan aimed at creating new blocks and wider roads, but no-one had a clear idea of what, once completed, the new district could or should represent in the general context of the city. After demolition, the reconstruction plans were never implemented and the empty spaces were “filled” later, after the Second World War.

This is how the characters of Vasco Pratolini’s Il quartiere (1945) saw the Fascist demolition: “They are improving our neighbourhood, knocking down the houses to build other newer and more beautiful ones where we won’t be able to live at the rents they’ll cost. [...] The improvement scheme had run riot in the heart of our district. Starting out from just after the Arco di San Piero, it reached Borgo Allegri and Via dell’Agnolo, leaving just one side standing. Seen from the square with the sun beating against it, the long, straggling line of old houses, each joined to the next, emanated a sense of sadness. Once the buildings opposite mirroring their image had gone and the natural dimension of the street had been lost, the cracks, the shabby doors and windows, the rusty showers, the façades themselves, dirty and grey with time, the threadbare washing hanging at the windows were revealed in all their squalor. Violently lit by that great ark of light from the square, the rooms revealed the poverty of their contents to all eyes. [...]
Walking through the square, I noticed that people instinctively crossed it following the route of the old roads, rather than taking a short-cut along the diagonal. Children played in safety in the middle of the square, avoided by the cars, deterred by the heaps of masonry scattered all about. Almost at the edge of Borgo Allegri, a merry-go-round had been set up. Every morning it was hidden away inside a great canvas hood. Perhaps because of my long absence, or perhaps precisely because of the new physiognomy acquired by that part of the neighbourhood following the demolition, I discovered things I had either forgotten or which I had never noticed before. A little haberdashery shop which must always have been there as the shutters were faded and peeling and in the meagre window there was a yellowed and dusty propaganda poster instigating war and man-high railings, uselessly protecting a walled-up window.”

Other lesser projects within the city centre during the Fascist period led to the creation of Piazza Brunelleschi with the Casa del Mutilato (architect R. Sabatini, 1936), demolition of the small houses along the north flank of San Lorenzo (1933-35) and saturation of the buildings along Via Giusti or Via Bonifacio Lupi. As in other Italian cities, the Fascist regime’s main objective was to construct monumental or image-enhancing works such as the Casa del Fascio (architect C. Burci, 1927-28); the municipal stadium (engineer P.L. Nervi, 1932); the Santa Maria Novella railway station (architects G. Michelucci, N. Baroni, P. Berardi, I. Gamberini, B. Guarnieri, L. Lusanna, 1934-35); the Scuola di Guerra Aerea (Air Warfare School) at Le Cascine (architect R. Fagnoni, 1937); the Casa del Balilla in Piazza Beccaria (engineer F. De Reggi, architect A. Cetica, 1936-37) and the artisans’ market in Piazza Cavour (architects S. Pastorini, M. Pellegrini, 1939).

The new Florence station is rightly held to be one of the masterpieces of Italian architecture in this century. Enclosed in an austere shell of pietra forte (a yellowish-brown arenaceous limestone), the interior is skilfully sub-divided and embellished with cladding in marble and precious metals, as in the Medici’s 17th century chapel mausoleum in San Lorenzo.

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