No, no, no, in Florence, they can be red numbers or black numbers too!

I recently posted a long digression on Florence’s address system but if you are like me, you need additional study guides for remembering all this information.  Here’s a great commentary on Florence’s idiosyncratic address system.  The source follows at the end.

During the RISORGIMENTO, or “resurgence,” the political and social process that unified Italy during the nineteenth century, the city of Florence experienced massive urban renewal. It had become apparent that businesses that were once simply people selling from carts, market stalls, or out of ground floors of family homes were now evolving into the kinds of operations we know today— large and small shops separate from street and home. This posed a distinct municipal problem: how to distinguish business addresses from home addresses. Since it would have been impossible to renumber the entire city, a unique numbering classification was born. As a result, to the dismay and confusion of today’s visitors, buildings in Florence operate on two numbering systems. Buildings housing commercial businesses have red numbers, meaning that the number listed in the address is followed by an r for rosso. The red number on the facade of the building tends to be engraved into a square marble slab, and, with age, appears to be anything but red. Residential numbers are indicated in black, even though the numbers on the buildings are actually blue, on a white ceramic plate.

While the addresses in this guide are shops and hence should be red, this is not always the case. The red and black numbers do not necessarily correspond (i.e., number 57r can be directly across the street from, say, 100r, and next to a black 31). Moreover, examples of “red” numbers styled in black (see below), and vice-versa, are apt to crop up every now and then. When all else fails, consult the map at the beginning of each walk. Should you become completely frustrated, a stop at a gelateria or wine bar (also indicated on the map) is a highly

Fili, Louise; Apatoff, Lise (2015-03-17). The Cognoscenti’s Guide to Florence: Shop and Eat like a Florentine (Kindle Locations 106-110). Princeton Architectural Press. Kindle Edition.

And for people who like their information via video, I give you this!

 

Let’s say you’ve been in Florence for a while and you can find all the major sights without a problem.

Let’s say you are now living in Florence and begin to make the connections that one makes when living someplace new.

Let’s say, for example, that you have an appointment in a professional office at 10 a.m. tomorrow and you Google Maps the address and feel confident you know where you’re going.

And, let’s say you get to the right street, which can be a Via, a Borgo, a Viale, a Strada, or even a Viccolo.  Or, it could be that designation known as a “Lungarno.” And there’s even something called a “sdrucciolo” (a slip) such as in sdrucciolo dei Pitti, for example.

OK, let’s recap: you know the address you want and you are on the right street. You hope.

Will you be at your appointment on time?

Maybe.  Maybe not.  It will all depend.

Let’s approach this problem slowly. Piano, piano, as Italians say to me constantly.

Addresses all over Italy are usually pretty straightforward. Street numbers on one street are arranged from the lowest to the highest, normally with even and uneven numbers on opposite sides of the road.

Florence, however, is one of the two only towns in Italy (the other is Genoa) with a distinction between red numbers and black numbers for addresses. Red numbers usually indicate a business, whereas black numbers in theory designate a private residence or a hotel.

Supposedly, you can discern immediately if you have arrived at a shop, office or business or a home, just by the color of the street number.  It should be red or black.

Ha ha!

Sometimes the street numbers are red and black, but they can also be green or blue or some color that cannot be deciphered.  Trust me, I’ve seen that!

So, since I presume I am not the only person confused by this changing color system,  somebody smart tried to make finding addresses easier by adding the suffix R, for red, after the red address numbers. Sometimes this designation will be given to you as “24 rosso” or “24/r” so you must be on your toes!

So, sometimes, but not always, the street address will give you a further clue.

In addition to having a possible clue, you need to understand that each set of address numbers, red or black (you still with me?) follows its own system, so it is not uncommon for two numbers, such as 6 and 6r, to be located several metres away from each other in the same street.  That’s if you’re lucky!

Remember also that Google Maps, and many other GPS devices, don’t acknowledge the difference between red and black numbers. So, if you are counting on the map you sent to yourself on your smart phone, and if you have internet service at the moment you’d like to be consulting that map, you still might not be at the right address!

Or, as I read in a book recently, I swear to god: “It could thus be hard to find an address just by strictly following directions.”

You fool, you!  You thought you could find an address just by following directions!  Ha ha!

If you, like I, find yourself asking “where did this insane system originate?” the simple answer is it was devised by the local authorities in the early 20th century to help unfortunate people who were not born and bred in Florence find their way around the city. The city council hoped to simplify the previous and much more complicated system.  OMG, can you imagine what that would have been?!

To master the material I have just introduced to you, I suggest you read this succinct appraisal of the system from this nice source: http://yourcontactinflorence.com/how-to-find-an-address-in-florence-italy/

1. It gets complicated. In Florence Italy we have different numbers for residential buildings and commercial activities. So in each street we have two series of numbers: red numbers are assigned to shops, blue numbers are for houses.
2. On one side of the street we have even numbers, while on the other side we have uneven numbers (in squares, numbers are consecutive). Numbers start from the side of the street which is closer to the river Arno, if the street is parallel to the river, numbers go from East to West, like the river.
3. To identify red numbers, just look at the color, often hard to see because of dust and color vanishing, especially in the old streets of the city center. If you read an address that refers to a red number, you could find it written like “42 rosso” but also “42/R”.
4. Blue numbers: sometimes, to add some complexity, all the doors in a building have the same number with a different letter: 42a, 42b, 42c etc. Also, not all the numbers are actually blue, some are black or even in different colors.

Oh, and one last good thing to know:  Nowadays this dual color numbering system is only present in the Florence’s historic center and in nearby areas, whereas newer neighborhoods have adopted the standard Italian system with only one set of numbers.

Oh, and p.s.: I still can’t find a certain yoga studio I’m looking for.  I’ve followed directions to the location, but haven’t spotted the studio yet. Soon, I hope. :-)  I did find my doctor’s office recently, after 3 tries, so I am making good progress!

I don’t pretend to understand all the issues at stake.  But, here is a NYT article that breaks the banking part down.  It was written before the recent “No” vote that caused Matteo Renzi to resign.  Some key parts I’ve highlighted below the article.

A recession that lasted seven years wiped out nearly a quarter of Italian industry. The unemployment rate sits above 11 percent. The population is aging, and too few women are working, limiting spending power. Too many Italian businesses are small operations that are especially vulnerable to globalization. Family-run craft and apparel makers have been destroyed by low-cost competition from China. Negative interest rates maintained by the European Central Bank to encourage lending have cut into bank profit margins.

Italy’s banking pain is a symptom of an Italian business style that has traditionally favored relationships and community ties over a dispassionate analysis of the bottom line — a perception the nation is eager to alter. To visit senior Italian officials in their offices decked out like personal versions of the Sistine Chapel is to hear a recitation of complaints that reforms have gone underappreciated. They betray resentment that Italy continues to be caricatured as the reckless debacle at the center of European economic decline.

The comically ineffectual former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi — a fiercely tanned media magnate — has been dispatched to history. At the controls today is the young technocrat Matteo Renzi, who has delivered a spate of politically perilous reforms long sought by solemn-faced officials in Brussels.

Under Mr. Renzi’s direction, Italy has made it easier to fire workers. This has somewhat diminished a major disincentive to giving people jobs — the not-irrational fear that problem hires will stick around forever, like grown children tethered to the refrigerator. Italy has also sped up civil processes in its notoriously inefficient courts.

The prime minister is now seeking a constitutional change that would refashion the entire legislative process in an effort to break a logjam in the upper chamber of Parliament. He argues it would eliminate obstructions to further pro-growth measures.

 

The view from my bedroom window.  Amidei Tower in foreground.  :-))  Amazing.

 

 

 

 

The view from my terrace.

I almost cannot believe it.

You know the place.

You go there to buy spectacular gold jewelry, or at least to window shop, and to take selfies.

Yet, I wonder how many of the millions of visitors in Florence each year walk over the Ponte Vecchio have any true sense of its importance within the fabric of the city.  Not many, I’d wager.

There is a major clue to the bridge’s importance right there on the bridge itself, yet most travelers don’t even notice this evocation of Dante’s literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy.  

We’ll get to that in a minute, but for now, let’s discuss the bridge itself.

 

The Romans were the first to site a bridge over this spot of the Arno and the famed bridge has been the central crossing point of the Arno for some 2,000 years.

Think of that!  When you cross the bridge, you do so because the Romans sited it there and built the first structure!  The Romans, people!

Roman engineers chose this location, the narrowest point in the Arno in 59 B.C., when they settled the untamed floodplain that became a colony they called Florentia (for flourish).  The Romans laid out their new city, drained the marshes, and built the first bridge in this location with stone piers and a wooden superstructure.  Just as the Roman planners intended, Florence became the crucial link between the north and south of Italy on the Via Cassia.

The Ponte Vecchio was not only the oldest bridge in Florence, it was, until the construction of a new bridge in 1218, the Ponte alla Carraia, the only one!

Throughout the centuries, the bridge was destroyed by floods a few times, and eventually it was reconstructed in stone. Sheltered in a little loggia at the central opening of the bridge is a weathered dedication stone, which used to be legible and reads:

 Nel trentatrè dopo il mille-trecento, il ponte cadde, per diluvio dell’ acque: poi dieci anni,

come al Comun piacque, rifatto fu con questo adornamento

This translates to:

In the thirty-third year following thirteen hundred, the bridge fell, from a watery flood: ten years later, at the pleasure of the Commune, it was rebuilt, with this adornment.

 

And then there is the Dante connection:

Durante degli Alighieri lived from about 1265 to 1321 and was, of course, a major Italian poet of the Late Middle Ages. He authored the Divine Comedy, widely considered to be the greatest work of literature composed in Italian. That work chronicles a three-day journey taken by the poet through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and Heaven (Paradiso) and is dedicated to Beatrice, the object of his amorous obsession.

According to legend, Dante was standing near the Ponte Vecchio when he first saw a young woman standing on it. The woman was Beatrice di Folco Portinari (1266–1290), a Florentine who probably appears as one of the poet’s guides in the Divine Comedy.  It is Beatrice who leads Dante into the Beatific vision, as her names suggests.

The historical Beatrice was the daughter of the banker Folco Portinari, and was married to another banker, Simone dei Bardi. Dante claimed to have met “his” Beatrice only twice, on occasions separated by nine years, but was so affected by the meetings that he carried his love for her throughout his life.

Poor Beatrice died in 1290, carried off by plague, and leaving Dante stricken with the loss. He never forgot her and came to see her as the intermediary between his soul and Heaven itself.

So now you understand how important the Ponte Vecchio itself was for Dante himself.  Keep in mind that in his day, what we call the Ponte Vecchio was the only bridge spanning the Arno in Florence. You can well imagine that later, when he was exiled from Florence, the city he loved, he recalled the bridge with affection as a symbol of his birthplace.

But that still doesn’t explain the particular Dante quote on the bridge.  To what does the inscription from the Divine Comedy on the bridge refer?

Is it about the meeting of Dante and Beatrice?  You might think so, but you’d be wrong.

On the northeast end of the famous bridge, is this inscription taken from the 3rd part of the Paradiso (XVI, 145-47).

The inscription, taken from Paradiso XVI, 145-47, reads as follows:

Conveniasi a quella pietra scema 

Che guarda il ponte, che Fiorenza fesse 

Vittima nella sua pace postrema.

The English translation: “How fitting for Florence to sacrifice a victim to the mutilated stone  [the statue of Mars] that guards her bridge to mark the end of peace!”

So, Dante was not referring to himself and his muse, but rather to the infamous murder of the young nobleman, Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti.  On his wedding day, as Buondelmonti, dressed in white, rode his white horse from the Oltrarno to Florence over the famous bridge, he was on his way to marry a girl from the house of Donati.

However, Buondelmonti was supposed to marry another woman, a daughter of the house of Amidei.  His arranged marriage to an Amidei was a part of a previously devised peace arrangement between the dissenting factions known as the Guelphs and the Ghibbelines.

Knowing of his change of plans, the Amidei and their supporters lay in wait that Easter morning beneath the statue of Mars. Buondelmonte was “pulled from his horse by Schiatta degli Uberti, assaulted and wounded by Mosca Lamberti and Lambertuccio degli Amidei, and finished off by Oderigo Fifanti. They had with them one of the Counts of Gangalandi” (Giovanni Villani, Chronicle of Florence, Book V, 38).

So, Dante’s inscription on the bridge makes reference to the war between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, that rocked many Italian communities for the next century and beyond. Until this time, Florence alternated between guelph and ghibelline rule.

Don’t forget that Dante was exiled from Florence after ending up on the loosing side of the battle between the White and Black Guelphs. Following a comprehensive victory of the Black Guelphs, Dante was condemned to exile for two years, and ordered to pay a large fine. He did not pay the fine, in part because he believed he was not guilty, and in part because all his assets in Florence had been seized by the Black Guelphs. He was, therefore, condemned to perpetual exile, and if he returned to Florence without paying the fine, he could be burned at the stake.
Dante never managed to go back to Florence, even when his sentence of death was reduced to house arrest.  The lines from the Divine Comedy inscribed upon the Ponte Vecchio thus refer to the reason for Dante’s exile.

A final note about the Ponte Vecchio: it was the only bridge across the Arno that the fleeing Germans did not destroy in WWII. Instead, the Germans blocked access to the bridge by demolishing the medieval buildings on each end of it.

On November 4, 1966, the bridge miraculously withstood the tremendous weight of water and silt when the Arno once again burst its banks.

But still the bridge stands.  May it ever.

Last Saturday I hiked up to San Miniato al Monte just outside Florence.  It was quite a trek, but well worth it.

 

While the Profumeria/Farmacia at Santa Maria Novella is pretty widely known and discussed, I don’t hear much about the Pharmacy at San Miniato.  It is a lovely stop and looks like this:

 

Inside the small shop to the left of the church, one can find all sorts of fine concoctions, including honey, jams, jellies, and vin santo.

 

More attractive to me are all the creams and lotions, essential oils, soaps…all the girly stuff.  I love these things!