Palazzo Spini Feroni: The Pope's Banker and the Black Guelphs
Why is it significant?
At the end of Borgo Santi Apostoli a fortress blocks the way: a huge stone palace with a crown of battlements, its flank running along the river and its front facing the bridge of Santa Trinita. Every other building around here looks polite next to it. That was the idea.
Key Facts
| Place | Palazzo Spini Feroni: The Pope's Banker and the Black Guelphs |
|---|---|
| Address | Via de' Tornabuoni 2, 50123 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.76970, 11.25100 |
| Part of Walk | Guilds, Feuds and Bonfires: The Florentine Republic Walk in Florence |
| Generated | Generated |
At the end of Borgo Santi Apostoli a fortress blocks the way: a huge stone palace with a crown of battlements, its flank running along the river and its front facing the bridge of Santa Trinita. Every other building around here looks polite next to it. That was the idea.
Palazzo Spini was begun in 1289 for Geri Spini, a merchant banker whose company handled money for Pope Boniface VIII. It was one of the largest private palaces of medieval Florence, built at the end of a bridge, where whoever held it could watch the traffic in and out of the city. In a Republic where politics was settled by armed clans, a palace this size was a statement of how many men you could put on the street.
Remember the Guelph party you met earlier? Once the Ghibellines were gone, the winners split in two, the Blacks and the Whites, and Geri Spini was one of the leaders of the Blacks, closely tied to the Pope. In 1301 the French prince Charles of Valois rode into Florence, officially as a peacemaker, and the Blacks seized power under his protection. Hundreds of Whites were condemned, and in 1302 one of them, a former prior named Dante Alighieri, was exiled for ever.
Here is the twist. Boccaccio, writing a few decades later, turned Messer Geri Spini into a character in the Decameron, a grand and courteous gentleman who learns a lesson in manners from a humble baker called Cisti; in the same day of stories, his wife Madonna Oretta puts a boring storyteller in his place with a single witty remark. The man who helped drive out Dante became a figure of urbane Florentine conversation.
The battlements you see were largely restored in the nineteenth century, but the bulk is medieval, and it still dominates this corner of the river. From here, walk east along the Lungarno degli Acciaiuoli, with the water on your right, until the street runs into the oldest bridge in Florence.