The Gardens of Florence - Piazza Massimo D'Azeglio

Far from the madding crowd! If you are attending one of our courses, take a break and stroll at --- PIAZZA MASSIMO D’AZEGLIO. It is a large green space practically in the historic center, its history is interesting from an urban planning point of view. Before 1865 it was an area of ​​vegetable gardens and fields within the walls that ran where now there are the ring avenues. In 1865 the capital of the Kingdom of Italy was moved from Turin to Florence, waiting to conquer Rome, and in 1864 the architect Giuseppe Poggi was commissioned to draw up the structure of the new city in order to house the state bureaucracy and the court with all its annexes. He made decisions today considered questionable, but the modern city has grown following his master plan. The area around the current Piazza D'Azeglio was expropriated and divided into lots within a regular mesh, lots that were purchased by wealthy bourgeois families and senior state officials, becoming the most modern and exclusive neighborhood in the center. In fact, a characteristic of the square is that all the buildings around it are luxurious buildings and villas of a high architectural level. A cosmopolitan environment was formed, frequented by politicians, intellectuals, artists and musicians who lived or were hosted here and crowded the salons  where the "important" public opinion was formed at the time. The name of the square sums up its destiny: the Marquis Massimo d’Azeglio (1798 - 1866) was an important politician, writer, poet and painter. The area was structured in lawns, a hexagonal fountain with a statue of an ibis, patches of plane trees and hackberry (wood from which the whips were then made!), boxwood and laurel hedges. Until 1940, the square was actually "private" because it was surrounded by a high gate of which only the owners of the buildings around had the keys and could use it. With World War II and the fascist government's campaign to donate "iron to the homeland" to build weapons, the gates were "donated" and the square became public! Florence, Piazza Massimo D'Azeglio.