1 - Marketplace Encounters: Social Mixing on the Streets of Early Modern Florence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2023
Summary
Abstract
Florence’s once-standing mercato vecchio, today’s Piazza della Repubblica, existed as a meeting place of multiple strata of urban society. Populated with its vendors and customers as well as its in-between figures, such as zanaiuoli and battifancelli, the market space physically allowed for the encounter of diverse members of society, yet the tales and images of its oxymoronic existence—marvelous and messy, loud and intimate—communicate much more. In my contribution, I explore literary and theatrical representations of this public square and its peoples, analyzing cultural encounters, social mixing, and practices of inclusivity/exclusivity in the urban landscape. Furthermore, I draw on historical sources, including census data, tax records, and now digital humanities projects such as Decime, to track trends of identity, status, and movement in Florence.
Keywords: Florence, early modern Italy, zanaiuoli, comedy and urban spaces
Florence’s mercato vecchio was the living center of the city as both physical space and sociopolitical realm of values, status, and images. Once the site of the Roman forum, through premodern periods of economic growth, it flourished as the beating heart of commerce and urban street culture. Early modern everyday practices of production and consumption and social life are communicated to us through the market square’s diverse population: its vendors and its customers meet in-between figures: mendicants, brawlers and ruffians, upper-class strollers, and marginal professions such as street singers and zanaiuoli (“deliverymen”). Even in its squalor in the nineteenth century, the market features in walking tourist itineraries of the city, indicating its importance to anyone who wants to truly understand the urban environment of Florence.
When Florence was the capital shortly after Unification, the physical-turned-symbolic space would be demolished. There was a sense of loss among architects and city planners; some promoted an open, public forum to debate new proposals for the people’s market. Over 100 years later, the arch of Piazza della Repubblica looms larger, its inscription promising new life: “L’ANTICO CENTRO DELLA CITTÀ DA SECOLARE SQUALLORE A VITA NUOVA RESTITUITO” (“the ancient city center returned to new life after centuries of squalor”).
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- Interpreting Urban Spaces in Italian Cultures , pp. 19 - 38Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2022