 by Gloria Chiarini
The well in the Tower of the Pulci
Practically every tourist who comes to Florence visits the square outside
the Uffizi Gallery. This of course
is partly due to the attraction of the wonderful paintings in the Gallery
and partly to admire the original architecture of the palace itself, which
Giorgio Vasari commissioned by
Cosimo I de' Medici. completed
in just five years (1560-65). It is in fact this horse-shoe shaped palace,
whose two wings stretch from Palazzo
Vecchio to the Arno, that actually creates the square itself; the porticoes
on the western side open off into Via Lambertesca, a narrow street that
leads right into the heart of the oldest part of the city, the mediaeval
area that Vasari partly demolished to make room for his new creation.
The restored Tower of the Pulci |
It was here that the Mafia car-bomb exploded on the night of May
27th 1993, on the corner between Via Lambertesca and Via dei Georgofili,
killing five people and causing great damage to the artistic heritage
of Florence. The explosion seriously damaged the upper rooms of the Uffizi
and disembowelled the ancient house and tower of the Pulci family beneath
it, from 1932 the seat of the historic Academy of the Georgofili, specialized
in agricultural studies and the conservation of the territory since 1753.
The tremendous sight is still a vivid memory for all the rescuers who
first arrived on the scene after the explosion: this time the small palace
of the Georgofili, which had survived so many wars and floods, seemed
really to have suffered its death blow. One half of its facade (200 square
metres) had been completely destroyed, shattered in the explosion, a huge
pit, about ten metres deep, had opened up in the interior, while the whole
of the south wall, which faced onto the Courtyard of the Caldaie, was
in danger of collapsing, because it had been shifted 10 centimetres by
the impact. The attic-flat that had been created at the top of the tower
in the early 20th century had crashed to the ground, covering the bodies
of the four people who lived in it with rubble: the caretaker of the Academy,
her husband and their two little daughters, one aged nine and the other
only two months. The fifth victim was a student who lived in the house
opposite, which was also directly hit by the explosion. We can see his
face again in a moving book of drawings and watercolours that was carried
out after the terrorist attack by the artist Luciano Guarnieri.
The reconstruction |
Three years have passed since then. Florence has always replied to
barbaric acts such as this by immediately getting on with mending her
wounds and rebuilding everything that has been damaged "as it was
and where it was". Once the huge patrimony of books belonging to
the Academy (50.000 volumes plus 4.000 Essays from the archives of the
Georgofili) had been carried away to safety and all the rubble removed,
the walls that were still standing were reinforced and the ones that had
been destroyed reconstructed. Traditional techniques were combined with
advanced technological solutions: the roof and bent tiles were made by
hand, the corbels and capitals carved by Florentine craftsmen but use
was also made of mortar injections, chains, steel plates and bolts. Great
care was taken during restoration to keep to certain basic rules which
were to ensure that the newly reconstructed areas of the building could
in some way be recognized from the original. Therefore a zig-zagging fracture
line divides the floor of the huge Assembly Hall on the first floor, to
delimit the area that fell to the ground, and another line on the facade,
a vertical one this time, divides the ancient decorated walls from the
new. Two large canvases by the painter Bartolomeo Bimbi were unfortunately
irreparably damaged and cannot be replaced. Indirectly, however, this
catastrophe, caused by such brutal wickedness, has also led to some unexpected
and extraordinary results, like the discovery of a series of about seven
small rooms, which were once part of the State Archives, later walled
up and forgotten and now available for the use of Academy of the Georgofili
once more. Above all it revealed the existence of a well and staircase
system that leads up from the cellars to the upper floors and which probably
is the last trace of the house that the Florentine land register of 1427
noted as being the property of Jacopo di Francesco de' Pulci and father
of Luigi, who was a friend of Lorenzo
the Magnificent and author of the poem "Morgante". The house
and tower still bear the name of the Pulci family even today, in spite
of the fact that the building appears to have passed to the Gherardini
family after 1433.
The staircase discovered during restoration |
The well and the staircase that winds around it and reaches the top
floor of the Uffizi Gallery are now free of the walls and plaster that
once hid them, the grey stone archivolt and steps have been restored in
order to form a harmonious unit with the various rooms of the Academy.
Apart from being an unexpected reward for all those who worked on rescueing
the building, this discovery is yet another demonstration of Giorgio Vasari's
skill in construction, as he managed to incorporate the ancient tower
of the Pulci family into the revolutionary architecture of the Uffizi
without destroying it.
The bricked-up mediaeval well |
In fact the original project included plans to expropriate and demolish
at least 43 houses and towers in order to build the new palace of the
"Uffici" or offices, but Cosimo de' Medici decided that this
would be far too expensive in the long run and therefore the most of the
buildings were spared though they were eventually incorporated into the
new construction. The Tower of the Pulci and the results of this extraordinary
restoration work can be visited daily during the hours in which the Academy
of the Georgofili is open to the public: Mondays to Fridays from 3 to
6.30pm.
In collaboration with:
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