Giuseppe Poggio's Plans for the City
In the years immediately following Tuscany's annexation to the Kingdom of Italy, there was no lack of measures aimed at improving the city's arrangement and appearance. In both substance and form they were the logical continuation of the grand duke's projects from the first half of the century. According to the law for the first population census of 13 December 1861, each street had to have but one name over its entire length, not from "canto to canto." In 1860-61 the last section of Via dell'Oriuolo (formerly Via Buia) was broadened "to facilitate traffic [and] to offer admirers a more beautiful view of Giotto's bell tower and Brunelleschi's dome".
Via Nazionale was lengthened to connect Piazza Indipendenza, center of the Barbano district, with the S. Maria Novella railroad station (fig. 4 n. 22). Upstream from Ponte Vecchio, the lungarno was "ennobled" by tearing down the large drying shop to build a rigid block destined to become the Borsa delle Merci that was completed in 1860 "whose foreign design broke the view of the Arno towards Arnolfo's tower, altering the scale of proportions with the Uffizi" (E. Detti, 1970).
In 1862 the municipal government floated a bond to be able to begin building the Maglio district and broaden the most heavily trafficked streets. In those years, Via Cerretani and Via Panzani were widened to create a better connection between Piazza del Duomo and the railroad station. As in the case of Via Calzaiuoli, the serial Medieval building modules were replaced by large blocks of surfacing. Via Strozzi, and Via Tornabuoni were widened between Piazza Antinori and Via Strozzi itself, moving back the fa?ade of Palazzo Corsi-Salviati and moving the Loggetta Tornaquinci (1862-84) according to the plans by the architect Telemaco Buonaiuti.
At the beginning of the XIV century Florence had a population of approximately 100,000; in 1865, five and one half centuries later, when it became capital of Italy, its population was 150,000.
The annexation of Tuscany to the Kingdom of Italy and the decision made immediately thereafter to move the capital to Florence was a severe trauma for both the city and the region. Its entry into the rhythm of Italian economic life, the concentrations of businesses, and the functional needs deriving from this new role of capital had a profound impact. The problems raised by the new political situation found a solution in the work of the managing class that showed that it knew how to assume the burden and management of the transformations imposed by transferring the capital to Florence.
The city, where housing was already a serious problem, had to accept another fifteen to twenty thousand people who would comprise the new Italian government. Rents increased, and in order to help the most needy families, the Societ? Edificatrice di Case Operaie built thirty thousand rooms. To meet the needs of the poorest members of the population, the City built temporary prefabricated housing in steel and wood in the belt-area around the Viale, at Porta alla Croce and Pignone outside Porta S. Frediano.
The capital's government offices found their headquarters in the great buildings in the old city center. According to the law of 1866 on the expropriation of the church's assets, ecclesiastical institutions could no longer own real estate other than what was needed to carry out the institution's role and purposes: places of worship, bell towers, sacristies, and housing for the clergy.
In order to meet the needs of the new capital in just two months, the architect Giuseppe Poggi submitted his "outline plan for [urban] expansion", based on a forecast of fifty thousand new inhabitants. This plan contained all the groundwork for the next fifty years of Florence's history. Poggi included the Maglio and Mattonaia districts and the widening of the roads already planned by the municipal Ufficio d'Arte, based on the example of the first guttings during the years of the grand duchy, and the earlier plans by the architect Del Sarto for rebuilding the ancient heart of the center around the Mercato Vecchio that called for a large bazaar with glass-covered galleries between Via Calimala, Via Pellicceria, Via Porta Rossa, and the archbishop's palace.
It was Poggi who was to decide about the strip adjacent to the street of the walls, the idea of a Campo di Marte on the other side of the Arno (then planned to the east in its current position, in a second edition of the plans) opposite the Cascine park with which it was to be connected via a bridge in line with the Piazzale del Re, and the new solution of the railroad lines (abandoned in the second edition). The population increase required an immediate solution and a long-range forecast of large areas for expansion.
The first consequence was tearing down the walls on this side of the Arno to build their outlines, bringing together the two streets inside and outside the walls, the link between the old city and new districts (fig. 4 n. 29). The demolition of the walls made it necessary to build a new customs boundary that divided the city's territory into two parts: open city and closed city. Of the 29 barriers there are still some remnants in Piazza Vasari near the Ponte al Pino and in Piazza Alberti. I
In 1910-11, when the city was further enlarged, the customs boundary was defined according to a new perimeter of thirty-three kilometers, with thirty-one barriers. The main architectural layout of Poggi's plans to which he dedicated his greatest efforts are the viali with the piazzas and the ramps leading to Piazzale Michelangelo, where he evidently took examples from Paris and the Ring in Vienna (fig. 19).
The demolition work on the walls began in 1865 and was completed 1869. When the walls disappeared the city lost a fundamental structural, functional and formal element. The distinction - as well as the definition-qualification - of "inside - outside" was lost. Even for Florence a new period of relationships between a center and suburbs began.
The most significant aspect of the plan was the concept of urban expansion in the form of an undifferentiated and purely residential checkerboard. These were clearly the consequences of a phenomenon of the selection and disintegration of functions that had already been launched with the first middle-class neighborhoods at the beginning of the century.
The figurative presence of the vertical walls facing the horizontal outlines of the country were replaced by the tree-lined avenues or "Viali di circonvallazione" circling the city built between the "filler" inside the old perimeter and the new outward expansion along the circuit of the viali. Poggi's viali tried to seek some qualification in the long perspectives aimed at the monumental proportions of the old city gates standing in isolated splendor on the new, flat piazzas.
"The new boulevards of the Sindaco Peruzzi come, it may be said, but they don't go; which, after all, it isn't from the aesthetic point of view strictly necessary they should. A part of the essential amiability of Florence, of her genius for making you take to your favour on easy terms everything that in any way belongs to her, is that she has already flung an element of her grace over all their undried mortar and plaster. Such modern arrangements as the Piazza d'Azeglio and the viale or Avenue of the Princess Margaret please not a little, I think - for what they are! - and do so even in a degree, by some fine local privilege, just because they are Florentine. The afternoon lights rest on them as if to thank them for not being worse, and their vistas are liberal where they look toward the hills. They carry you close to these admirable elevations, which hang over Florence on all sides, and if in the foreground your sense is a trifle perplexed by the white pavements dotted here and there with a policeman or a nursemaid, you have only to reach beyond and see Fiesole turn to violet, on its simple eminence, from the effect of the opposite sunset" (H. James, 1873).
One of the most interesting achievements was and is still, perhaps, Piazza Cavour . According to Poggi's plans, the Viale dei Colli should have continued beyond Porta Romana, on the Bellosguardo hills to Pignone and then, on the opposite bank to the Arno and the Cascine Park. The renowned Piazzale Michelangelo did not seem to be such a great success other than for the fact that it offers the public a large panoramic terrace. In both the choice of its location and qualification, the results of the romantic taste for the long views and for a panorama of the city in the distance, are all alien and incongruent with respect to the structural features of the city of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi. Even the concept of a panorama was foreign to Florence and only developed after Piazzale Michelangelo was created (fig. 6). The Loggia-Caf? (1873) was inconsistent with the stupendous San Salvatore and the mastodontic staircase below San Miniato is totally unjustified.
The positive aspect of Poggi's work is that he knew how to interpret and coordinate the powers at work and thus was able to quickly carry out grandiose projects, specifically the viali, which, in spite of everything, are the only planned and completed works in the modern history of Florentine urban development.
As to Poggi's architecture within the old city - remodeling and rebuilding prevail over new designs, they are characterized by the skillful resolution of neoclassical forms in a mannerist style that is reminiscent of the Florentine cinquecento. In Villa Favard, for example there is a clear reference to Raphael's Palazzo Pandolfini.
Via Nazionale was lengthened to connect Piazza Indipendenza, center of the Barbano district, with the S. Maria Novella railroad station (fig. 4 n. 22). Upstream from Ponte Vecchio, the lungarno was "ennobled" by tearing down the large drying shop to build a rigid block destined to become the Borsa delle Merci that was completed in 1860 "whose foreign design broke the view of the Arno towards Arnolfo's tower, altering the scale of proportions with the Uffizi" (E. Detti, 1970).
In 1862 the municipal government floated a bond to be able to begin building the Maglio district and broaden the most heavily trafficked streets. In those years, Via Cerretani and Via Panzani were widened to create a better connection between Piazza del Duomo and the railroad station. As in the case of Via Calzaiuoli, the serial Medieval building modules were replaced by large blocks of surfacing. Via Strozzi, and Via Tornabuoni were widened between Piazza Antinori and Via Strozzi itself, moving back the fa?ade of Palazzo Corsi-Salviati and moving the Loggetta Tornaquinci (1862-84) according to the plans by the architect Telemaco Buonaiuti.
At the beginning of the XIV century Florence had a population of approximately 100,000; in 1865, five and one half centuries later, when it became capital of Italy, its population was 150,000.
The annexation of Tuscany to the Kingdom of Italy and the decision made immediately thereafter to move the capital to Florence was a severe trauma for both the city and the region. Its entry into the rhythm of Italian economic life, the concentrations of businesses, and the functional needs deriving from this new role of capital had a profound impact. The problems raised by the new political situation found a solution in the work of the managing class that showed that it knew how to assume the burden and management of the transformations imposed by transferring the capital to Florence.
The city, where housing was already a serious problem, had to accept another fifteen to twenty thousand people who would comprise the new Italian government. Rents increased, and in order to help the most needy families, the Societ? Edificatrice di Case Operaie built thirty thousand rooms. To meet the needs of the poorest members of the population, the City built temporary prefabricated housing in steel and wood in the belt-area around the Viale, at Porta alla Croce and Pignone outside Porta S. Frediano.
The capital's government offices found their headquarters in the great buildings in the old city center. According to the law of 1866 on the expropriation of the church's assets, ecclesiastical institutions could no longer own real estate other than what was needed to carry out the institution's role and purposes: places of worship, bell towers, sacristies, and housing for the clergy.
In order to meet the needs of the new capital in just two months, the architect Giuseppe Poggi submitted his "outline plan for [urban] expansion", based on a forecast of fifty thousand new inhabitants. This plan contained all the groundwork for the next fifty years of Florence's history. Poggi included the Maglio and Mattonaia districts and the widening of the roads already planned by the municipal Ufficio d'Arte, based on the example of the first guttings during the years of the grand duchy, and the earlier plans by the architect Del Sarto for rebuilding the ancient heart of the center around the Mercato Vecchio that called for a large bazaar with glass-covered galleries between Via Calimala, Via Pellicceria, Via Porta Rossa, and the archbishop's palace.
It was Poggi who was to decide about the strip adjacent to the street of the walls, the idea of a Campo di Marte on the other side of the Arno (then planned to the east in its current position, in a second edition of the plans) opposite the Cascine park with which it was to be connected via a bridge in line with the Piazzale del Re, and the new solution of the railroad lines (abandoned in the second edition). The population increase required an immediate solution and a long-range forecast of large areas for expansion.
The first consequence was tearing down the walls on this side of the Arno to build their outlines, bringing together the two streets inside and outside the walls, the link between the old city and new districts (fig. 4 n. 29). The demolition of the walls made it necessary to build a new customs boundary that divided the city's territory into two parts: open city and closed city. Of the 29 barriers there are still some remnants in Piazza Vasari near the Ponte al Pino and in Piazza Alberti. I
In 1910-11, when the city was further enlarged, the customs boundary was defined according to a new perimeter of thirty-three kilometers, with thirty-one barriers. The main architectural layout of Poggi's plans to which he dedicated his greatest efforts are the viali with the piazzas and the ramps leading to Piazzale Michelangelo, where he evidently took examples from Paris and the Ring in Vienna (fig. 19).
The demolition work on the walls began in 1865 and was completed 1869. When the walls disappeared the city lost a fundamental structural, functional and formal element. The distinction - as well as the definition-qualification - of "inside - outside" was lost. Even for Florence a new period of relationships between a center and suburbs began.
The most significant aspect of the plan was the concept of urban expansion in the form of an undifferentiated and purely residential checkerboard. These were clearly the consequences of a phenomenon of the selection and disintegration of functions that had already been launched with the first middle-class neighborhoods at the beginning of the century.
The figurative presence of the vertical walls facing the horizontal outlines of the country were replaced by the tree-lined avenues or "Viali di circonvallazione" circling the city built between the "filler" inside the old perimeter and the new outward expansion along the circuit of the viali. Poggi's viali tried to seek some qualification in the long perspectives aimed at the monumental proportions of the old city gates standing in isolated splendor on the new, flat piazzas.
"The new boulevards of the Sindaco Peruzzi come, it may be said, but they don't go; which, after all, it isn't from the aesthetic point of view strictly necessary they should. A part of the essential amiability of Florence, of her genius for making you take to your favour on easy terms everything that in any way belongs to her, is that she has already flung an element of her grace over all their undried mortar and plaster. Such modern arrangements as the Piazza d'Azeglio and the viale or Avenue of the Princess Margaret please not a little, I think - for what they are! - and do so even in a degree, by some fine local privilege, just because they are Florentine. The afternoon lights rest on them as if to thank them for not being worse, and their vistas are liberal where they look toward the hills. They carry you close to these admirable elevations, which hang over Florence on all sides, and if in the foreground your sense is a trifle perplexed by the white pavements dotted here and there with a policeman or a nursemaid, you have only to reach beyond and see Fiesole turn to violet, on its simple eminence, from the effect of the opposite sunset" (H. James, 1873).
One of the most interesting achievements was and is still, perhaps, Piazza Cavour . According to Poggi's plans, the Viale dei Colli should have continued beyond Porta Romana, on the Bellosguardo hills to Pignone and then, on the opposite bank to the Arno and the Cascine Park. The renowned Piazzale Michelangelo did not seem to be such a great success other than for the fact that it offers the public a large panoramic terrace. In both the choice of its location and qualification, the results of the romantic taste for the long views and for a panorama of the city in the distance, are all alien and incongruent with respect to the structural features of the city of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi. Even the concept of a panorama was foreign to Florence and only developed after Piazzale Michelangelo was created (fig. 6). The Loggia-Caf? (1873) was inconsistent with the stupendous San Salvatore and the mastodontic staircase below San Miniato is totally unjustified.
The positive aspect of Poggi's work is that he knew how to interpret and coordinate the powers at work and thus was able to quickly carry out grandiose projects, specifically the viali, which, in spite of everything, are the only planned and completed works in the modern history of Florentine urban development.
As to Poggi's architecture within the old city - remodeling and rebuilding prevail over new designs, they are characterized by the skillful resolution of neoclassical forms in a mannerist style that is reminiscent of the Florentine cinquecento. In Villa Favard, for example there is a clear reference to Raphael's Palazzo Pandolfini.