Curious Florence: Torre della Castagna

Before the Palazzo dei Priori (Palace of Priors), later known as the Palazzo Vecchio, stood the Torre della Castagna (Tower of the Chestnut), the first building where the Florentine Republic was administered.
This is where the priors, the administrators of Florence at the time, gathered to vote, using chestnuts, hence its name. More precisely, they used ballotte, the name the Florentines call boiled chestnuts, a word from which the term "ballottaggio" (runoff) most likely derives.
The priors, meeting cum clave (that is, behind closed doors, literally locked, to prevent outside influence), placed the ballotte in bags and counted them. One chestnut more or one chestnut less was enough to seal the fate of the city, deciding taxes, alliances, and punishments.

The Torre della Castagna, located at Via Dante Alighieri 2, on the north side in front of the Casa di Dante museum, is very ancient and became the meeting place of the priors as early as 1282.
This quadrangular tower is quite tall and slender, but because it was considered "above the fray," it was saved from the scapitozzatura, the forced lowering of medieval towers and tower houses imposed in the second half of the 13th century to limit the power of noble families.

Today, the ground floor and first floor are owned by the dell'Associazione Nazionale Veterani e Reduci Garibaldini (National Association of Veterans and Garibaldini Veterans), and house a small museum of Risorgimento memorabilia. The upper floors belong to the nearby Court of Florence and are closed to the public.
To the right of the entrance door is a marble plaque quoting the fourth paragraph of the first book of Dino Compagni's Cronica, where the tower is mentioned.
There is so much history enclosed in the stones of Florentine buildings just waiting to be rediscovered!