DISCOVER OUR TOWN HISTORY

Between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century, following the struggle of the Florentine Republic against the local lordships that controlled the Valdarno, having alreadysubjugated a large part of the left bank of the Arno with the castles of Incisa, Figline, and Montevarchi, Florence also planned the creation of three ‘new lands’ (terre nuove), Castel San Giovanni, Castel Franco, and Castel Santa Maria (today Terranuova), plus a fourth in Valdambra(Giglio Fiorentino) which was never realized.

In 1299, Castel San Giovanni was founded on the left bank of the Arno and Castel Franco on the right bank. Following the rebellion of various castles subject to the Guidi counts around the lowervalley of the Ciuffenna stream and their submission to the Florentine Signoria, the latter decided on April 2, 1337, to build a “walled town” (terra murata) that would accommodate their inhabitantsand which was called Castel Santa Maria, both for the fervent popular devotion of the Florentines to the Madonna, and because the town’s first stone was laid on the first of September, the month in which the Nativity of the Virgin is celebrated.

The urban logic that governs the realization of these centers is informed by geometry thatexpresses, as Friedman writes, ‘more sophisticated formal ideas’. Symmetry, orthogonality, and parallelism create the urban space that flows into the central square, the seat of central power and the market aimed at collecting products to be sent to Florence. Where new lands were not created, Florence, on the other hand, acquired recently created centers that had grown up around a marketplace (mercatale) and fortified them: these were the cases of Figline and Montevarchi.

Florence’s effort to occupy the surrounding countryside (contado), rich in wheat and other rawmaterials useful for fueling and enriching an ever-expanding city, involved treaties or purchases of towns or portions of them (one example being the three-quarters of Montevarchi bought in 1254 from Count Guido Guerra) or the destruction of small castles to create scorched earth against the feudal nobility who controlled those riches. The terre nuove allowed for the control of supply markets and were a more effective military garrison instrument compared to the small castlesscattered here and there.

Carlo Fabbri reports that …‘the «revolt» had begun on September 17, 1336, from the castle of Terraio, subject to Count Marcovaldo di Modigliana of the Guidi family, despite the fact that the latter had recently expressed his «attachment to the Republic» by ordering all those, condemned or banished by the Municipality of Florence, who were in the castles, courts, and districts of San Leolino, Castel Castagnaio, Viesca, Terraio, and Castiglione, to leave these locations within a month and by giving orders to his officials to imprison the unwilling and hand them over to the Municipality of Florence;

That day, Guccio di Guiduccio, rector of the community, convened the assembly of the people atthe church of San Niccolò, «to the sound of the bell and voice of the crier», and the 127 presentcastellans unanimously elected Matteo di ser Lippo, Goscio di Dino, and Bernarduccio di Guiduccio as their attorney-syndics, with the task of appearing before the Florentine authorities to make an act of submission of the castle to the Republic. To these, it was particularly recommended(or suggested) to point out that the people of San Niccolò al Terraio had always been part of the Florentine contado and therefore had the right to be treated like the other Florentine «comitatini» and «distrettuali». On the following October 6, the men of Ganghereto, Pernina, and Le Cave pronounced in the same way, electing their respective syndics. This was followed, on November 26, by the people of the castle of Pozzo.’

The terre nuove were built on substantially flat or gently sloping land. The basic scheme wastraceable back to the Roman encampments, but Florence devised two variants with precise proportions and orthogonality. San Giovanni and Castelfranco are at the base of the variants thatthen inspired the design of the other terre nuove. Castel Santa Maria borrowed the square of Castelfranco which has a 9 to 7 proportion and from Castel San Giovanni the road system, althoughwith variations compared to the alleys of the latter which had proven to be cramped and poorlyventilated. To it was grafted the main street (via maestra) which was wider than the other streets. That of Castel Santa Maria had a ratio of slightly less than 2 to 1. Orthogonal to it was the othermain road; together they divided the settlement into four parts that defined the quarters. The building lots had dimensions that varied from 10 to 12 Florentine braccia (5.84m-7m) on the facades and from 10 to 38 braccia in depth (5.84m-22.2m). In the center of the quarter was a minor intersection from which other streets started, drawing the central square.

The first settlement operation consisted in drawing the defensive perimeter by means of ditches 20 braccia wide (11.7m) and 10 braccia deep (5.84m) and wooden palisades to be subsequentlyreplaced with stone walls. At Castel Santa Maria, founded in 1337, the walls were completedbetween 1350 and 1364. The project for Castel Santa Maria, similarly to Castel San Giovanni, planned for 24 towers which each had to rise 15 braccia (8.76 meters) above the level of the walls. Between the walls and the built-up area, a zone intended for defensive purposes had to remain, which in Castel Santa Maria was planned to be 7-8 braccia, or 4.1-4.7 meters.

In Castel Santa Maria, the main road measured 14 braccia, the residential streets 10 braccia, the service roads 8 braccia. The square had dimensions of 70 by 90 braccia (40.8 by 52.5 meters).

This spatial definition, however, is explainable, according to Friedman, ‘only by trigonometry, which, as in Castel San Giovanni, starts from a right triangle with a leg of 48.34 meters and a hypotenuse of 96.68 meters when the angle opposite the leg measures 30 degrees. To the samehypotenuse corresponds a leg of 83.72 meters when the angle becomes 60 degrees (the sine of the opposite angle multiplied by the hypotenuse becomes 0.866×96.68=83.72 meters). The discrepancybetween the geometric values and the average of the measurements surveyed in San Giovanni isless than one-third of 1%. In Terranuova, the unifying dimension, i.e., the hypotenuse of San Giovanni, is represented by a distance measured on the via maestra, between the center of the square and the end of the first block, which measures 83.4 meters. This measurement representshalf the distance on the via maestra between the center of the main square and the walls. With thishypotenuse, a series of triangles is built that varies the angle by 15 degrees in 15 degrees.’