After the battle of Figline in 1250, when the Guelphs obtained so decided a victory over the Ghibellines, it was decided to create a Captain of the People and a Council of Elders; and soon afterwards the erection of a palace worthy of the new government was decreed. Many houses (built both of stone and wood), towers, and plots of land were bought, the last chiefly from the monks of the Badia. The contracts for these still exist, stating that they were bought _a edificatum est pro particula palatium populi fiorentini_, one of the houses belonged to the brothers Riccomanni, and its tower is the one we still see crowning the fine old building. Another house belonged to the Boscoli, in which the Captain of the People temporarily took up his abode. In 1255, as is recorded by an inscription, building was commenced. According to Vasari the first architect was Arnolfo di Lapo, but some ten years later the Dominican friars, Fra Sisto da Firenze and Fra Ristoro da Campo, who together built the church of Sta. Maria Novella, were called in. Whether the palace was ever inhabited by the Captain of the People, or when it was finished, is not known, but in 1261 Guido Novello, the Podestà who ruled the city in the name of King Manfred, was living in it, and named the street Ghibellina, after his party. By law the Podestà had to be a “foreigner,” _i. e._ not a citizen of Florence, or of any town within fifty miles of Florence, as he might be supposed to be influenced by friendship or by fear. He remained in office for one year and took precedence of every one in the city, administering civil and criminal justice, but not interfering in political matters. In 1282, when the city of Florence was “reformed,” the Podestà and his councillors met in the loggia which led into the great hall, so that the heads of the Guilds and the principal citizens could assist at their deliberations. The first notice we find of any internal decoration being attempted in the palace of the Commune, as it was then called, where the Podestà lived, to distinguish it from the palace of the People, the residence of the Priors, is in 1292, when the painter, Fino di Tedaldo, painted certain images above the door of the hall and above the judge’s seat. These frescoes probably perished three years later when, as old Villani tells us, the Podestà absolved Corso Donati who had been accused of treacherously murdering a Florentine burgher, an adherent of Simone Galastrone. “No sooner was the sentence read condemning Messer Simone Galastrone as the perpetrator of the deed, than the _popolo minuto_ shouted ‘death to the Podestà,’ and rushed out of the palace crying, ‘To arms, to arms, long live the People.’ Many seized their weapons, and went to the house of their head man, Giano della Bella who, they say, sent them with his brother to the palace of the Priors to follow the Gonfalonier of Justice. But they went not thither, but to the palace of the Podestà, which the said