Description
Palazzo Spini Feroni is the medieval palace overlooking the Santa Trinita bridge, at the start of Via Tornabuoni, with its exposed stone, battlements and the look of a fortress. It is one of the finest examples of medieval residential architecture in Florence, and since 1938 it has been the home of Salvatore Ferragamo's shoes.
The palace is above all something to look at from outside. The pietraforte façade rises three floors, up to the battlemented gallery with Guelph merlons, held up by inverted-pyramid corbels. On the ground floor there is still the loggia and, all around, the street bench, the stone base that served as a seat.
The large arched windows were a novelty for the time, so different from medieval arrow slits: Palazzo Davanzati and Palazzo Castellani may have taken their cue from them. From outside you can see that the great families had to defend themselves, first of all, from their own fellow citizens.
It was built from 1289 by Geri Spini, a very rich merchant and politician, and at the time it was the largest private palace in Florence: the only one that could rival Palazzo Vecchio, which was rising in those same years.
A child falls from a window of the palace and Saint Francis, appearing in the sky, brings him back to life: Ghirlandaio painted it in the Sassetti Chapel of the nearby church of Santa Trinita, and in the background you can recognize the palace itself, as it was then.
In the 1600s half of it was bought by Francesco Antonio Feroni, who rose from humble origins to become a banker in Amsterdam, where he welcomed Cosimo III with such splendor that he earned a noble title. In 1832 it became the Hotel de l'Europe, then the seat of the city government in the years when Florence was the capital.
Inside there is a private chapel with frescoes by Poccetti, detached from another room and remounted, and in the atrium the high relief of the Giants struck down by Jupiter's thunderbolt. In the cellars, where the Ferragamo Museum is, you find the Well of Beatrice, dedicated to the woman Dante is said to have first met at the Santa Trinita bridge.
The palace is above all something to look at from outside. The pietraforte façade rises three floors, up to the battlemented gallery with Guelph merlons, held up by inverted-pyramid corbels. On the ground floor there is still the loggia and, all around, the street bench, the stone base that served as a seat.
The large arched windows were a novelty for the time, so different from medieval arrow slits: Palazzo Davanzati and Palazzo Castellani may have taken their cue from them. From outside you can see that the great families had to defend themselves, first of all, from their own fellow citizens.
It was built from 1289 by Geri Spini, a very rich merchant and politician, and at the time it was the largest private palace in Florence: the only one that could rival Palazzo Vecchio, which was rising in those same years.
A child falls from a window of the palace and Saint Francis, appearing in the sky, brings him back to life: Ghirlandaio painted it in the Sassetti Chapel of the nearby church of Santa Trinita, and in the background you can recognize the palace itself, as it was then.
In the 1600s half of it was bought by Francesco Antonio Feroni, who rose from humble origins to become a banker in Amsterdam, where he welcomed Cosimo III with such splendor that he earned a noble title. In 1832 it became the Hotel de l'Europe, then the seat of the city government in the years when Florence was the capital.
Inside there is a private chapel with frescoes by Poccetti, detached from another room and remounted, and in the atrium the high relief of the Giants struck down by Jupiter's thunderbolt. In the cellars, where the Ferragamo Museum is, you find the Well of Beatrice, dedicated to the woman Dante is said to have first met at the Santa Trinita bridge.