Architectural Posters of Florence

Florence: From Medieval Commune to Renaissance

These fifteen architectural posters present Florence as a city of churches, communal palaces and powerful merchant families. Individual views, comparative façade plates and urban vistas lead from the Romanesque Baptistery through the great Gothic monuments to Brunelleschi and Alberti, whose works decisively shaped Renaissance architecture.

AP 213, AP 015, AP 347, AP 363, AP 544 and AP 315 · The Cathedral Square Ensemble

Santa Maria del Fiore, Giotto’s Campanile and the Baptistery of San Giovanni form the religious centre of Florence. Begun in 1296, the cathedral gained its defining silhouette from Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome: construction of the double-shell structure started in 1420 and its basic fabric was complete by 1436. AP 213 and the smaller AP 015 explain the dome through section, construction and details; AP 363 and AP 544 show the entire cathedral. AP 347 focuses on the campanile begun by Giotto in 1334 and continued by Andrea Pisano and Francesco Talenti. AP 315 centres on the geometrically ordered marble exterior of the octagonal Baptistery.

AP 317, AP 010, AP 316, AP 376, AP 011 and AP 107 · Florentine Church Façades

Leon Battista Alberti completed the façade of Santa Maria Novella for Giovanni Rucellai in 1470. Clear proportions and the celebrated scrolls unite its existing Gothic lower section with a new Renaissance order (AP 317 and AP 010). San Miniato al Monte (AP 316), by contrast, preserves the rigorous geometry of Florentine Romanesque architecture. Santa Croce was begun in 1294/95, probably to plans by Arnolfo di Cambio; its present Neo-Gothic marble façade dates only from the nineteenth century (AP 376 and AP 011). AP 107 compares churches in Florence and other Tuscan cities from 1000 to 1700, making the evolution of façade types immediately legible.

AP 344, AP 327 and AP 106 · Communal Palace and Urban Palazzi

Palazzo Vecchio, begun in 1299, first served as the seat of civic government. Its fortress-like mass and 95-metre Arnolfo Tower still dominate Piazza della Signoria (AP 344). Palazzo Rucellai (AP 327) translates the urban palace into the language of the Renaissance: its façade, attributed to Leon Battista Alberti, organises rustication, pilasters and entablatures into three subtly differentiated storeys. AP 106 brings together palaces from Florence and other Tuscan cities between 1250 and 1650. The comparison traces a path from fortified family houses to regular façades governed by proportion and the classical orders.

AP 418 and AP 304 · Piazza della Signoria

Piazza della Signoria developed with the Palace of the Priors in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries as Florence’s political and public centre. The Loggia dei Lanzi, Palazzo Vecchio and later sculpture transformed it into a ceremonial urban room. AP 304 unfolds the ensemble as a broad panorama. AP 418 preserves a view dated 1569: from the edge of the square the eye travels along the city axis towards the cathedral while Palazzo Vecchio rises to one side. Florence’s civic and religious centres are thus placed in direct visual dialogue.

AP 345 and AP 012 · Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio has crossed the Arno since the fourteenth century as bridge, street and commercial row at once. Shops line both sides, opening at the centre to views of river and city. Above the eastern row runs the Vasari Corridor, built in 1565 for Cosimo I de’ Medici to connect Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi with the residence in Palazzo Pitti. AP 345 and the smaller AP 012 show this unusual layering of arches, shops and enclosed passage in a long lateral elevation.

AP 346 · Palazzo Pitti

The Florentine merchant Luca Pitti commissioned the palace in the mid-fifteenth century at the foot of the Boboli hill. In 1549 Eleanor of Toledo acquired the building for the Medici, and Bartolomeo Ammannati enlarged it as a grand-ducal residence. The imposing, strictly ordered rusticated façade expresses the ambitions of its occupants through scale and material rather than ornament. AP 346 conveys the palace’s enormous horizontal extent in a narrow panoramic view.