L’espace résidentiel de la noblesse Florentine, XVI e -XVIII e siècles

This contribution examines the forms of residence of the Florentine nobility in both the city and countryside between the sixteenth and eighteenth century. Combining families who had acquired the right to exercise the highest offices in the Republic during the Republican period with a few feudal landowners and families of more recent origin admitted by the Grand Duke to his military order, this group tended not to occupy a privileged geographical space, distinct from the rest of society. On the contrary, its palaces were to be found in all quarters of the city. At the same time, they stood apart because of their location in certain streets or because of their size and decoration. The nobility’s residences were thus at the heart of processes of social and political domination. The article examines the residential geography of the Florentine nobility, drawn from a list of noble families established in 1713. It analyses the link between its long-term stability and the creation of a particular kind of residence - the urban palace – in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which came to crystallize a family’s symbolic capital. On the death of its owner, the palace was subjected to a trust, which ruled out the possibility of its alienation, so strongly was it identified to the family and its history. For a nobility that considered itself to be the historical memory of the city, it became more important to manage the patrimony of existing palaces than construct new ones. By contrast, a more dynamic habitat characterized noble villas around Florence. They were essentially constructed between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, in the middle of large agricultural domains oriented towards commercial farming. The nobility stayed there twice during the year, at the end of spring and in autumn. The villa was then the site of intense sociability, along court lines. In the richer ones, the libraries were well furnished and there were theatrical performances and games. Indeed, the villa was an island of urban life in the countryside, a place where the nobility could isolate itself from the rest of society, as it could not do in the city. This contribution shifts the approach from the city towards the countryside in order to emphasize the extent to which the noble residential system rested on two separate poles, opposing and yet complementary at the same time

Art · Humanities · European Political History Analysis · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis